Chrysler closings target Republicans? (Page 2)

Looking at the statistics from the Nate Silver report:

836    'Auto Dealers, automotive dealers, automobile dealers, or car dealers' gave to Republicans
136    'Auto Dealers, automotive dealers, automobile dealers, or car dealers' gave to Democrats

It would seem to me that if Obama was targeting Republican donors, he would have made sure that he got alot more than the 70 or so that were axed....

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Specualtion or ignoring the obvious. I mean we could speculate that somehow the sun being hotter right now than it has been in years has something to do with "global warming" or we could listen to Al Gores group who says that the sun being hotter has no effect.

We could speculate that the governemnt isnt using their ownership of the auto industry to force a green agenda down everyones throat. Of course theres no paperwork confirming it per se but its obvious thats what they are doing/ will continue to do

You are ignorning the obvious and you are far too smart to need  proof to point out to you who is strong arming their way around our economy. Would a few more bankers coming forward saying they were forced to take bailout money help? There are plenty out there

Back to the mob analogy. Thyearent going to write up volumes on what they are doing but they are doing something.

Edited by Imjin 2009-05-28 10:48 AM

Amen!

Our local right wing oriented radio host was having (another) coniption fit the other day.

This time one of his show's heavy advertisiers, an auto dealership, is being closed. All his listeners were instructed to go to the dealership for a rally because somehow closing the dealership wasn't "fair". Boo hoo hoo.

Apparently when it is a friend of his, who pays his station a lot of money, then the world needs to somehow be "fair" and exceptions need to be made. When it isn't his buddy, then the message is 'HTFU/ market forces/you weren't competitive/bummer for you your job got sent overseas/free trade/blah blah blah'.

It is sad that people are losing their livelihoods. I am sure they did their best to do a good job. They either just aren't competitive in their area or they aren't making the profit cutoff. If the growth isn't there or the profit % isn't there they'll get cut. There's no conspiracy. That's how business works. It is not a mystery.  

You are missing the entire point it appears many of the dealers that are being closed are making a profit, some appear to be among the most profitable. Their closing has nothing to do with how business works and is therefor a mystery.  That is what we need to find out.  If the dealership is losing money and a drain on Chrysler than by all means close it. But if we are closing a dealership because we want to punish them politicaly I ask is that the America you want to live in?

If that's happening, it sucks. But nothing I've seen has demonstrated that that's happening. In fact, the WND article and the subsequent data regarding all Chrysler dealerships suggest poltical favoritism has *nothing* to do with it.

Ya know...I heard this chatter about profitable dealerships being closed, but I have yet to see any data supporting it.

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Tell me again why is it in Chrysler's best interest to give the market share of a franchise owner to his competitor without just compensation?

look! it's jesus in a cheeto!!!





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Again with the data. A dealer saying they are profitable and have no idea why they are being closed isnt good enough? Its not like they have anything to gain from saying they are profitable. Oh thats right they get the privledge to use the Chrysler name.

Do you think Chrysler would admit closing profitable dealers or that the Government wouls tep up and admit if they told them which ones to cle? Of coure they wouldnt so your "Official 100% Solid Evidence Data" will never be out in the public arena.

Edited by Imjin 2009-05-28 1:38 PM

Dealership profitability has little to do with the dealerships being closed. Chrysler's profitability has everything to do with the dealerships being closed.

As a 20-year automotive dude I'm intimately familiar with how automotive companies select, grade, preference, and evaluate dealers. First criteria: volume. Second criteria: mix (are they selling the most profitable kind of cars). Third criteria: everything else (service, dealer profitability, you name it).  It's not about politics, it's about money.

With Chrysler, I just talked to my buddy, who's VP Corporate Communications with this rumor. No substance. The Chrysler team evaluated dealers to keep based on market share, competition, vehicle mix, and some pedestrian stuff like accounting, cash flow (payments back to Chrysler, there are some d-bag dealers that will sell a car and not pay the mfg), and service history. They made the recommendation to the board, who okayed it, no outside influence on the selection process.

Two final points:

As others have stated, the vast majority of car dealers own more than one dealership, or at least sell more than one mfg's car. They have multiple franchises and are wealthy. This fits the republican demographic much more closely than the dem demographic. I'm not at all surprised by the statistics, nor alarmed.

Second, back to the first sentence of this post. The VC's, lawyers, bondholders, stockholders, management, and board of Chrysler - making up 99% of the people invoved in the process - could really care less about Elephant/Donkey.  They care about cash in their pockets, that's all.  Think of them as the mob. It doesn't matter whose money it is, as long as it's money. That's how desperate it is. And I've lived it.   

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Anyone see Countdown this evening? This exact topic made the "WTF Moment" segment. LOL! I'm sure there's many folks out there that paid more attention than I did, because I was laughing at us all talking about this very thing today, but one of the points was that about 88-92% of the dealerships gave to republicans, and about 88-92% of the closed dealerships were ones who gave to republicans. So essentially, no targeting. The closed dealerships' demographics matched the overall dealership demographics almost exactly.

Of course, feel free to research your own stats as I'm sure Olbeman's stats won't necessarily be acceptable. His were taken from  other people put together from some contribution statistics site,  Watch if you like. 

What are we gonna talk about tomorrow? We might make Countdown again!

And to kep things fair and balanced so that no one thinks its a Keith O line of BS ( which wouldnt be a stretch or out of the ordinary) the hated Glen Beck said the same thing hours earlier.

Correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't part of the problem the lack of transparency with respect to who is getting the ax?

I too hate conspiracy theories and based on the info I've read I suspect this will end up being a non story but given the government is involved (and therefore us taxpayers) shouldn't the whole process been more transparent?

If the decisions were based on some matrix of volume, revenue, service quality, etc. then release that information and this whole story goes away.

Disclaimer: I haven't done a ton of digging so if this info has been released, then never mind