The UAW owns General Motors; with White House aid, Karl Marx's vision has been realized

My last all-American-made car was a 1976 Dodge Aspen. It ground up its own transmission three times. On one of those occasions we were driving toward grandmother's house, 250 miles away, for Christmas.

About 100 miles from our destination the shifter stopped working while the car was in the third of four gears. Stopping was no longer an option. By carefully adjusting my speed while approaching intersections and building up speed to climb hills I was able to navigate all of the obstacles and finish the trip.

But it was a white-knuckle journey that left me seethng with rage.

Years later, I told the story to an acquaintance who had spent his working career in Detriot auto plants, although he was not an auto worker. He told me that he had watched as line workers ate lunch, tossing their wrappings into gas tanks still lying open on the factory floor.

Later, those line workers would seal the two halves of a gas tank with the trash still inside. My acquaintance thought it was funny.

I no longer cared because I hadn't owned an American-made car for more than 20 years.

Now the perpetrators of the Dodge Aspen and dozens of other instant lemons, through the UAW, own General Motors. Does anyone, other than the United States government, think that's a good thing? Does anyone, other than the government, think that we've forgotten or forgiven the trash that was foisted on us over the years by the auto industry?

It was Honda, Toyota and other Japanese auto makers that forced General Motors and the other American car companies to mend their ways in the manufacturing plants. But that mending came about because the plants were run by managers who answered to executives of corporations engaged in competition for markets.

Who will the UAW answer to? A one-party government that regularly demonstrates contempt for free markets while building a statist system in which government allocates ownership of failed corporations instead of leaving those decisions to the bankruptcy system. That's how General Motors came to be owned by the UAW.

Some of us may shudder at the prospect of White House oversight. Air Force One, after all, just made a $329,000 flyover photo-op that sent New Yorkers scurrying for cover.

But Karl Marx would have nodded with approval, amazed at the eventual success of his 1848 screed that called on workers to overthrow their bosses and take control of the factories.

Even Marx, who thought big, would not have imagined that the White House would be a party to the fulfillment of his Communist Manifesto.