A Department of the Treasury report this week released some
of its final numbers on the auto industry bailout, with good news:
"only" $9.26 billion was flushed down the drain bailing out America's
labor union-dominated auto industry. As the Detroit Free press reports:
Taxpayers lost $9.26 billion on the U.S. government's automotive industry rescue program, according to a final tally released by U.S. Treasury this week... The government said it recovered $70.42 billion of the $79.68 billion it gave to General Motors, Chrysler, Ally Financial, Chrysler Financial and automotive suppliers through the federal Auto Industry Financing Program.
The government lost money, but far less than initially expected when the program was launched in 2009.Of course, President Obama himself was consistently telling Americans that "GM has repaid every taxpayer dollar my administration" lent to them in the auto bailout program. That is, of course, a blatant lie.
And the Treasury Department isn't exactly the most reliable source of numbers here, considering they're led by political apointees beholden to President Obama. The Congressional Budget Office, for example, has historically put out different numbers than Treasury, showing the bailout to be in worse shape. The nearly $10 billion loss might be understating it.
The real test will be if GM and the other companies continue to survive or continue to need bailouts.
As Jim Pethokoukis wrote for AEI last year:
Bailing out a failing company is a lot easier than turning around a troubled company so it once again makes a quality product... Washington didn’t save GM, if by “GM” you mean an innovating, value-adding, self-sustaining automaker. That’s just not something government really knows how to do.GM has proved to be in dire straits. They had a disastrous recall in 2014, and they've struggled to produce midsize cars that compete even close to the same level as Japan's leading Camry and Civic products. Maybe we'll end up having lost "only" $10 billion. In a counterfactual world, though, the U.S. automakers might already be producing beter products. And in the real world, we may have just wasted a truckload of money delaying the inevitable.
Two Planes...One Found...One Missing...Still
By: Diane Sori
And now with debris, more than 30 bodies being recovered to date, and with five major parts of the Airbus A320-200 now having been found off the island of Borneo, AirAsia Flight 8501with 162 people on board has curious minds wanting to know why it went down. But there are those of us who look at this latest crash NOT with the curiosity of gawkers or so-called 'disaster groupies' but because we have a very tangible question to ask...a question we already know the answer to...as in with debris and bodies being found...as it should be...where the hell is the debris and 239 bodies from MH370 that supposedly is somewhere in the Indian Ocean.
Debris, bodies, and major plane parts...found because sonar images were able to identify a so-called 'shadow' of a jet lying on the bottom of the Java Sea about six miles from Flight 850's (QZ850) last known point of contact...yet here it is nine months later and NO 'shadow' of 370 is anywhere to be found...NO shadow...NO debris...NO bodies...NO nothing. Quite odd I would say as the simple fact is that when a plane crashes there is evidence of said crash NO matter how deep within the sea the plane ends up...for something... anything...eventually floats to the top or washes ashore somewhere.
Also, remember the media reporting ad-nauseum that the MH370 search area in the Southern Indian Ocean covered more than 100,579 square miles with some areas being four miles deep, and how that became the cover story as to why the plane has NOT been found. Well...even in an area that large the natural laws of physics still apply...as in lighter than water objects like life vests, clothes, seat cushions, etc...less dense than the water that surrounds it...will still float to the top...as will bodies or body parts for over the days they fill with lighter-than-air gas.
But NOTHING of the sort has happened with Flight 370.
So while some still believe that a mechanical and/or human error, an engine stall, or even a mid-air break-up due to an explosion or sudden depressurization could have happened to MH370 let's NOT forget that if that was the case physics proves that debris of some sort would have been found by now...as in body parts, floating objects, or parts of the plane itself...as was the case of the Lockerbie plane where debris was found for miles around. And even if by some chance a missile brought down MH370 there would still be debris...in fact, a huge debris field would be left just like the one left when Ukrainian separatists fired missiles and downed another Malaysian Airliner...MH17...last July.
And so MH370 has now become the story of 'what-if 'scenarios.
And with the pilot doing said rapid climb even after ground control denied him permission to do so might have caused the Airbus A320's engines to stall because of its overly steep climb that was probably beyond the jet's capabilities. Now add in that infra-red satellite pictures taken at the time flight 8501 was in the area showed peak cloud temperatures at that altitude of -80 to-85 degrees Celsius...which would have caused the plane to ice-up...resulting in either engine damage or in a total engine stall.
So again, while MH370 is NOT in the water AirAsia Flight 8501 most certainly is. And the facts being that the AirAsia 8501was flying in more 'populated' skies over relatively shallow water (requiring a search of only 70 nautical miles); and that flight 8501did NOT deviate from the routinely used flight plan (although it should NOT have been flying that route that day); along with the fact that all communications between the towers and flight 8501were working properly right up until all contact was lost...shows the difference between it and MH370, especially when its known that MH370 flew for hours after it lost ground communication and was well off its intended course...making the two flights in NO way alike in some ways but quite alike in other ways.
Quite alike in other ways...as in the fact that NO distress call came from either flight 8501nor from flight MH370. And neither the pilot nor co-pilot of either plane made any attempt to indicate there was a problem...as in the planes were simply there one second and poof...gone the next second. Gone in a second yet the AirAsia plane was cruising between 32,000 and 35,000 feet when it lost contact, yet while cruising the pilot and/or co-pilot had plenty of time to report any technical problems, especially before suddenly ascending but did NO such thing.
And while Captain Iriyanto did clock 20,537 hours of flying time...a good thing...isn't it a bit odd that both he and the pilot of missing MH370 were devout muslims. Now being a devout muslim does NOT mean anything in and of itself, but according to islmaic expert Walid Shoebat, before Iriyanto applied for early retirement from Indonesia's Air Force to become a commercial airline pilot he had been a pilot in said Air Force flying a Hawk MK-50 fighter jet and an F-5 at the time when roughly 200,000 mostly Christian Timorese out of a total population of 600,000 were bombed and killed. And the media of course simply ignores Iriyanto's possible involvement in this.
So it's only a matter of time before we know exactly what happened to AirAsia flight 8501 but know that with the fuselage having been located we will get answers one way or another. And also know that only by looking on land...looking on airstrips in country's that hate us...will the mystery of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 ever be solved.