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According to CNBC, General Motors has ramped up its lobbying efforts to the tune of $3.58 million in the first quarter of 2011. This is nearly triple the $1.36 million it spent in the first quarter of the prior year. It is also over double the $1.67 million spent by non-bailed out Ford in the same quarter. The $50 billion that taxpayers gave to bail out GM is now partially being distributed back to President Obama, Congress and a variety of agencies in an effort by GM to, well, receive more taxpayer money.One of the requests made by GM lobbyists...

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (a non-partisan watchdog group) says the Internal Revenue Service failed to stop millions of dollars of fraudulent claims from being issued to prisoners, the deceased and underage applicants. The IRS’s system is designed to catch fraudulent claims before sending taxpayer money to criminals. However, a Reuters report explains that the qualified motor vehicle deduction (QMV) program was abused by thousand of individuals with a total cost to taxpayers of over $152 million and over $1 million of those losses were filed by prisoners, deceased and underage applicants. The QMV program was created by...

It appears peculiar that a company would demand that government do something that hurts its customers. But that’s what many limited-government policy experts are saying after General Motors CEO Dan Akerson told the Detroit News that he wants to see the federal government raise its gas tax by as much as $1 per gallon. Akerson told the Detroit News that he’d like to see the federal gas tax hiked to get customers to be more receptive to smaller more fuel-efficient vehicles. According to the Detroit News: “A government-imposed tax hike, Akerson believes, will prompt more people to buy small cars...

Detroit — 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, and he's confident the government will soon shed its remaining 26 percent stake in the once-bankrupt automaker. "I actually think the government will be out this year — within the next 12 months, hopefully within the next six months," Akerson said in a two-hour interview with The Detroit News last week. He is grateful for the government's rescue of GM — "I have nothing but good things to say about them" — but...

General Motors shares fell 5% on Wednesday after May auto sales figures were reported. Most auto manufacturers were hit as sales for the industry fell pretty much across the board. Excuses for the industry shortfall ranged from higher prices for vehicles to Japan parts shortages. GM cannot claim the latter, since they earlier declared that there were no issues with parts supplies. The one telling statistic on GM is one that was not reported in most of the media coverage, which was the fact that incentives at the automaker were, once again, well above industry averages. According to Edmunds, the...

the Chevy Volt ...was $43,000. The dealership also gets a tax credits of $7,500 per Volt... Will GM earn a profit on Volt sales ? ... The Volt costs $81,000 to build per unit and has sold 493 units in April for a loss of $38,000 per unit, paid for by taxpayers ... I would love it if the private sector developed a workable, cost effective electric car (even though we plug the car into a grid with power generated by coal burning plants). But the Volt seems like something directly out of the old Soviet Union where Stalin would...

General Motors plans to temporarily shut down its Detroit-Hamtramck plant for four weeks, starting in June, to prepare for increased production of the Chevrolet Volt and the export version, the Opel Ampera. They also plan to reconfigure the plant to build the upcoming 2013 Chevy Malibu. Planned upgrades to the plant include installing new tools, equipment and overhead conveyer systems which all add up to increased production of the Volt and Ampera. After the plant reopens GM will still be working on changes for the upcoming production of the 2013 Malibu. The planned closure will temporarily reduce the already limited...

If you've tried to buy a used car recently -- a lot of people are finding it hard to get what they want. There is something of a used car shortage going on. News 10NBC found out there are a number of factors why there are fewer used cars out there. One is -- more people are holding onto their new cars longer but also, there are fewer rental cars coming on the market and fewer people are leasing vehicles so therefore -- fewer of those cars are out there. Joan Kamisch is trading her 2000 Chevy Lumina for a...

General Motors' stock hit an all-time low today of $31 and change. That's right, "all-time." Today's GM is a new company that did not exist two years ago. In an effort to shed liabilities and force sacrifices from creditors while protecting the UAW, GM emerged from bankruptcy as a totally new company. The media inaccurately reported that GM had its best earnings since 1999, but it has not given a clear picture of the situation at GM. Biased media coverage is a story in itself, but let's look at why GM has not done as well as the pundits...

The potential popularity of electric vehicles has always been tempered in cold climates like here in Canada because of the concerns that freezing temperatures will reduce the range of an EV’s batteries. And now a long-tem test report of the Chevrolet Volt, in the U.S. magazine Motor Trend, has confirmed that fear and also suggests you may have to keep your winter clothes on while driving the plug-in electric hybrid during colder days. The magazine found that the Volt uses up a “considerable” amount of battery range to heat up its cabin on colder days, reducing its range to well...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. government achieved its objective in the politically unpopular rescue of General Motors Co (GM.UL) and is prepared to relinquish majority ownership in the resurgent carmaker, Obama administration officials said. The government's sale figures as part of GM's public offering released late on Wednesday show a better-than-expected initial return but taxpayers are still less than halfway from breaking even on their $50 billion investment in the company. Treasury and White House officials said the federal stake in GM would drop from 61 percent to at minimum 37 percent through the sale of at least 358 million...

DETROIT — General Motors executives have been cleared for takeoff again. The automaker has been given the go-ahead by the federal government to use chartered aircraft as early as Thursday to ferry managers on a “road show” promoting G.M.’s public stock offering, according to government and company officials who declined to be identified. It is believed to be the first time that G.M. will use private jets for business-related purposes since the government demanded that it sell its fleet of corporate aircraft in 2008. As a condition for accepting emergency federal assistance, G.M. has required its executives to travel on...

DEVELOPING STORY GM CEO Whitacre to step down Sept. 1. Board member Dan Akerson to succeed Whitacre as CEO.

Who could have imagined that the bailout of the auto industry, one of the single most unpopular moves by the Obama administration, would become one of its best talking points? But don't for an instant imagine that the comeback of the nation's rescued car companies, particularly General Motors, will change the way we debate government's role in the economy. When it comes to almost anything the government does, ideology trumps facts, slogans trump reality, and loaded words ("socialism") trump data. Let there be no mistake: Rescuing GM and Chrysler took political courage, and I want to put in a good...

So the future of General Motors (and the $50 billion taxpayer investment in it) now depends on a vehicle that costs $41,000 but offers the performance and interior space of a $15,000 economy car. The company is moving forward on a second generation of Volts aimed at eliminating the initial model’s considerable shortcomings. (In truth, the first-generation Volt was as good as written off inside G.M., which decided to cut its 2011 production volume to a mere 10,000 units rather than the initial plan for 60,000.) Yet G.M. seemingly has no plan for turning its low-volume “eco-flagship” into a mass-market...

Here it comes: According to several reports in recent weeks, General Motors is expected to file registration papers for its upcoming IPO very soon -- any day now. While Tesla Motors' (Nasdaq: TSLA) recent IPO drew a lot of attention, that was small potatoes in comparison to what's coming. GM's initial public offering is expected to be one of the biggest in history, possibly the biggest.

A wave of criticism that started two weeks ago reached a crescendo this morning when Washington-based advocacy group Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, charging General Motors with deceptive advertising. -snip- In an April 29 letter to Mr. Whitacre, Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote that "your statements and the slick marketing campaign built around them constitute a lie to the American people, who have spent over $50 billion to bail out GM and currently own over 60% of the company. We...

You'd think that General Motors Co., having been rescued by U.S. taxpayers, would be more up-front with them. In an ad that has been blanketing the airwaves since last week, General Motors Chairman and chief executive Ed Whitacre boasts that "we have repaid our government loan, in full, with interest, five years ahead of the original schedule." In a press release, Whitacre said GM was able to repay the loans "because more customers are buying vehicles like the Chevrolet Malibu and Buick LaCrosse." Neither the ad nor the press release mentioned that GM repaid its government loan with other government...

A blizzard of safety concerns surrounding Toyota has put the Obama ­administration in a delicate position as it seeks to avoid the temptation of boosting the fortunes of Detroit's struggling US carmakers by bullying the Japanese manufacturer too aggressively. Toyota has swiftly become the butt of jokes in the US. The talkshow host Jon Stewart this week dubbed the firm's pedal problems "the Toyotathon of death". Speculating on the reaction of the bosses of General Motors and Chrysler, Stewart said: "Boys, we're back in the game! All we had to do was have the leading competition become a death trap."...