His master's voice

Another reason to never again purchase something made by Government General Motors:

"General Motors Co. CEO Dan Akerson wants the federal gas tax boosted as much as $1 a gallon to nudge consumers toward more fuel-efficient cars"

We're sure that naked endorsement of government-controlled social engineering will make prospective customers just fight to line up in front of Chevy dealerships from coast to coast.

This is exactly what happens when the government unconstitutionally gets its hooks into a private company - its putative head (who makes a reported 9 million dollars a year and gets a new company-provided vehicle every quarter.  Think Mr. Akerson has fretted at the pump lately?) ends up having to parrot the Obama Administration line in order to stay in their good graces.

The article also informs us just how much this little exercise in corporate favoritism is going to cost the peasants:

"At the current stock price, U.S. taxpayers would be out more than $12 billion on GM's bailout."

What happened to all those hearty assurances that the taxpayers were more than likely going to end up making money from this wretched deal?

"Asked if GM is considering buying back its stock, Akerson paused for eight seconds before declining to answer directly. 'But we have a lot of cash,' he added."

So get out from your deal with the devil already.  Unless, of course, that's exactly where you want to be.  We can't imagine the government would show up disgruntled at the stockholder meeting, after all.

"'We are in the midst of transforming an iconic American company so 20 and 30 years from now (taxpayers) will look at this company and they'll say, "Absolutely it was the right thing to do,"' Akerson said. 'And it shouldn't be measured on did it sell for $43 or $53 (a share) or did they lose a couple billion dollars?'" 

Unbelievable.  What's a few billion taxpayer dollars between friends if it ends up "transforming" a company that just couldn't manage to do so itself and thus deserved to fail, right, Mr. Akerson?