Here is an ad that aired on Thanksgiving day from Government Motors:
My first thought after watching this ad went back to the last GM ad where they lied to us and told us that they had paid back their taxpayer subsidized loan, ahead of schedule. Not true. They simply gave back some of the money, around 6 billion, but kept the remaining 43 billion of it. In fact, they still owe that and then some.
So now they are saying ‘We fell down, but you helped us get back up. Thanks for that.’ But I don’t believe most Americans wanted to help them ‘get back up’ at all. In fact, according to CNN only 32% of Americans wanted to give GM initial taxpayer loans in 2008, and only 18% wanted to give them a second big bailout in 2009. So no, most Americans were against it from the outset. What we wanted them to do instead was to restructure their organization and failing business model, to fix the actual problems that were ailing them. That would have probably meant bankruptcy in their case, but hey, that’s what it’s there for. But instead they took tons of taxpayer money which the government happily doled out to them, twice, and then at their new owner’s discretion (the government) they ended up going bankrupt anyway. What a waste of taxpayer money.
And now they are still leading us to believe they have paid it all back and are back on their own two feet. Still not true. We are still out most of the money we loaned them and they are still owned by the government, which is actually hurting their car sales.
Sorry GM, but we just aren’t that stupid. If you want to get back into America’s good graces, pay back all the money you took from us (with interest) and learn to stand on your own two feet like everyone else, including Ford.