Al Gore's Hand in Your Pocket

The following article was written by Dan Kennedy of the Business & Media Institute.

The Government is gambling with taxpayer money it doesn't have on a car that may never sell.

Gee, wasn’t it Obama who swore to end the influence of lobbyists in government?

So we should believe that Al Gore is not a big, fat lobbyist. It is pure coincidence that the start-up electric car company Gore is invested in and backing got a $529-million U.S. government “loan” to further development of its intended super fuel-efficient hybrid cars.

The first of those cars, humorously called the Karma, will sell for about $90,000. Later the company hopes – Obama’s favorite strategy – that it will be able to build a more affordable $40,000 version, but there aren’t even any plans on the drawing board for it yet. It’s just a thought. Oh, and a bunch of the work on the car is occurring in Finland. As far as I know, Finland has not loaned them $529-million. Perhaps that’s why it’s so tough to find those jobs Obama’s stimulus saved or created – they’re in Finland.

This company, Fisker Automotive, not only has Jolly Green Giant Gore as investor, backer and advocate (ie. lobbyist), its other top investors include major “bundlers” of millions of dollars of campaign donations for Obama. Coincidence abounds.

The car is a pipe dream. If it had legitimate marketplace potential, there’d be no need to gamble on it with taxpayer money. Gore and his buddies are awash in ultra-rich fat-cat investors – their private jets are parked right next to each other.

Do you really want your tax dollars used as gambling ante, so Gore and Friends take less risk, and government bureaucrats get to play venture capitalist? And seriously, an $89,000 hybrid sports car? The specious argument given by Henrik Fisker to The Wall Street Journal (9-25-09) is that a lot of technology starts out very pricey then becomes affordable over time with mass acceptance and volume, like big screen plasma TVs that once sold for $25,000. However, I don’t think we taxpayers ponied up $500-million to invent the whopper TVs.

This isn’t about investing, oops, lending to technology development anyway. This is risking taxpayer money on a start-up car company with a ridiculously high-priced product to be and no dealer network. At some point, this company will be trying to compete with Toyota, Honda, etc., as well as the wounded but still very present Ford, Chrysler and Government Motors, and in luxury sports cars, with the likes of Ferrari. The last time I looked around, by the way, there’s already a highly efficient hybrid car being sold. It’s called the Prius.

This is no more or less than theft of taxpayers’ money to reward campaign contributors and political insiders. It’s a reverse re-distribution of the wealth; money taken out of the paychecks of all those “working people” the Democrats are always blathering about fighting for. That money then goes into the pockets of made-rich-through-politics con artists like Gore and hustlers who raise money for Democrat candidates for this very reason: to have it returned to them a hundred-fold. Further, in this case, we are subsidizing a company with the stated goal of developing luxury cars no “working people” will ever be able to buy.

And need I point out, we don’t have the $529-million we just loaned for this scam? We are broke. Beyond broke. In debt to China and future generations up to our eyeballs. We have to borrow this $529-million in order to loan it out. This is the asinine equivalent of a bankrupt U.S. bank making loans to real estate speculators starting up muskrat ranches. In New Zealand.

If there's honest, legitimate opportunity to develop this kind of car, shouldn't we be loaning the money to an established American car company in which we are already heavily invested and already gambling on – not an upstart competitor? Shouldn't we be racing to beat any new boys like Fisker to the market?

If there is Karma, for which this phony-baloney car is named, then everyone in government, Gore, and the other hustlers involved with this theft and others just like it will come back in their next life as frogs in the Mohave Desert. Born there on a record-breaking, scorchingly-hot day.