Posted on 05/29/2009 9:21:13 AM PDT by IrishMike
There appears to be a side to the Chrysler bankruptcy that has the look of an ugly partisanship not seen in this town since Tricky Dick Nixon was in the White House composing his enemies list and checking it twice every night while watching the evening TV newscast.
Bloggers on the Right side of the Blogosphere are up in arms over data suggesting that President Obama’s White House auto industry potentates are targeting for closure Chrysler dealers with records of contributing either to Republicans like John McCain or to other Democrats in the 2008 presidential primary.
Posts at RedState, Reliapundit, American Thinker, Gateway Pundit, Joey Smith and Doug Ross pointed intitially at the remarkable number of closed Chrysler dealerships whose owners happen to have been contributors to Obama opponents, mainly Republicans.
But those observations were all couched with important qualifiers, particularly that all conclusions were necessarily preliminary, pending completion of a comprehensive analysis of the political contributions by all closed Chrysler dealership owners, and a comparison of those results with contributions by dealers who are not being closed.
That said, when multiple dealers who have been closed are found to have contributed millions to Republicans and mere hundreds to Obama, the serious number-crunching cannot be completed too soon.
Then there is the Reuters report quoting a lawyer representing dealers being closed who came away from a deposition of a senior Chrysler executive with the distinct impression that the company is simply following orders coming from the White House.
"It became clear to us that Chrysler does not see the wisdom of terminating 25 percent of its dealers. It really wasn't Chrysler's decision. They are under enormous pressure from the President's automotive task force," said attorney Leonard Bellavia.
Bellavia zeroed in on the fundamental problem with Obama’s takeover of two of Detroit Big Three – something is terribly wrong when the government tells corporations who to hire and fire, what products to sell and who will be their dealers.
"What is the next task force? Shoe stores? Pizzerias?" Bellavia said. "The problem we have is the free enterprise system is not run by the government, it's run by business entrepreneurs. The dealers themselves will decide if it's not productive to go forward."
I'm not sure you understand. It's just Chrysler because so far, only Chrysler has filed a pre-packaged bankruptcy that's being guided by the Obama administration.
Ford is still completely solvent, for now.
And, GM won't be announcing any official closing until after their bankruptcy filing which could come as early as next Monday.
There's nothing silly about fascism and the targeting of your political enemies for financial ruin.
Big difference.
As I recall Nixon was looking for the “bad” guys.
0 is looking for the “good” guys.
Bill Ayers: Praire Fire
"Revolution is a fight by the people for power. It is changing of power in which existing social and economic relationships are turned upside down. It is a fight for who runs things, in particular, for control by the people of what we communists call the means of production"
“Ford did not take money From the Government, GM is not far enough into the bankruptcy process to begin cancelling franchises, they will be in a few weeks.”
Yes, I understand about the money and was not commenting on that among any of the companies involved (except that in order for any discrepancies to go unnoticed, the smaller the company the better).
I’ll add that if any company goes down, there WILL be union people going over the books (all of them)
As to GM franchise demise, most have 1 year upon recent notification. A better response than CH
It took 100 years for men to realize that the brain is also important.
Hopefully it will not be too long into 0’s second 100 days for the majority of people to wake up and smell
....the crap !
“I’m not sure you understand.”
I do and thank you for the reply. Tough to keep up with some replies without reading all of the thread.
FWIW: I have GM in my past (work/stock/etc). Will take my lumps like the rest though.
The MSM has created such a comfort zone for the ‘Bama that corruption that would have cost past presidents their job is just routinely and openly practiced. The public has become so media-conditioned, that if Katie and Charlie don’t tell them it’s wrong, they’re clueless. America has become too complacent and gullible to hang on to the republic or their freedom.
Interesting, but it doesn't mean much unless data for all dealers is collected. It wouldn't surprise me that a business would give more to anyone running against a commie.
Good point. We need a list of open and cloosing dealers, to see if there is a `pattern`...
Absolutley, 100% correct. It's what keeps me up at night. This is their guy and they simply aren't going to let him "fail", no matter how frequently or severely he does.
Ping to the yeoman!!!
Writing in a May 3 article, New York Times chief White House correspondent David Sanger said, “Fresh from pushing Chrysler into bankruptcy, President Obama and his economic team are hoping the hard line they took last week gives them leverage to force huge changes in General Motors, a far larger and more complex company.”
“The first testicular guard, “Cup”, was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in Hockey was 1974.”
How the heck did this come from a car thread... oops sorry, of course.
I can only add that I had a boss who regaled (often) that he played football without a helmet.
His judgment calls seemed to support same.
Findings from 538.com breaks down some of the data on all car dealers (Not just Chrysler).
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/05/news-flash-car-dealers-are-republicans.html
Overall, 88 percent of the contributions from car dealers went to Republican candidates and just 12 percent to Democratic candidates. By comparison, the list of dealers on Doug Ross’s list gave 92 percent of their money to Republicans.
Wrt, the RLJ dealerships. Given some of the money behind this group (Bob Johnson is a billionaire) these dealerships might be better capitalized and better performing than some of their single dealer operating competitors. There may be corruption or it may be performance based. Further investigation will tell.
Also, Bob Johnson was an outspoken critic of Obama during the Democratic primaries and I would guess that McClarty would have been a Clinton supporter as well.
ping.
A sad ping.
“Writing in a May 3 article, New York Times chief White House correspondent David Sanger said, “Fresh from pushing Chrysler into bankruptcy, President Obama and his economic team are hoping the hard line they took last week gives them leverage to force huge changes in General Motors, a far larger and more complex company.””
I .... what is this in response to ?
I know that the NIC wants change, but I still maintain that there are too many involved for this to be a fiat by simple takeover without challenge.
Even yesterday, the GM bondholders seem to have upped their share in the surreptitious bailout, from 1% to 10%.
That is Bondholders, not stock holders (I’m both and future pensioner — no medical)
They have similar plans for GM, and don’t have the same leverage to use against Ford.
Perfect suit for this Gangster Administration.
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