More fallout from DealerGate.

From the Washington Post (Hat Tip – Stop the ACLU):

Since the 1970s, General Motors has led the way in providing opportunities for minorities to own car dealerships. The automaker pioneered special training programs and put money behind candidates for new dealerships.

Now, after almost four decades of slow but steady progress, minority dealers are increasingly worried that the latest wave of GM cuts could erode any gains. As part of its latest restructuring, GM yesterday said it planned to slash about 2,600, or 40 percent, of its 6,200 dealerships. GM currently has about 240 minority dealers.

GM officials have yet to list which dealers could face closure. GM spokeswoman Susan Garontakos said decisions will be based on individual dealer performance but said the company remains committed to expanding the number of minority-owned dealerships. The criteria include sales, customer satisfaction ratings, capitalization, profitability, location and the quality and size of the store. Minority dealers say those criteria could prove fatal for their operations.

More to the point is a black dealership owner in MI:

Others also expressed worry about GM’s criteria for keeping dealers.

“I’ve got two of the largest volume Chevrolet stores on either side of me,” said Mike Johnson, owner of Michael Chevrolet in New Baltimore, Mich. “In terms of raw numbers, we don’t compete with the larger, well-established white dealers. GM is going to be looking for the dealers who dominate their market territories.”

GM dealers see other bad signs. They point to GM’s decision to kill the Pontiac brand. Nearly a third of GM’s minority dealers sell Pontiacs, according to the National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers.

The number of minority dealerships industry-wide has slipped to about 1,200 from a peak of 2,000 in 2002 and 2003, according to NAMAD. Johnson said he was particularly concerned about the staggering decline of black-owned dealerships at GM.

“In 1990, GM had over 100 African American dealers. Today we are down to 40,” he said. “We are absolutely certain that a large portion of us are going to get wiped out.”

So even as President, a man who sat 20 years in a Black Klan church, who used race in every possible way to drive wedges between communities, parties and candidates to get elected and continues to do so to this day, could very well end up screwing those minorities he vowed to “save and protect”. But why should that surprise anyone? Chicago thug politics are not known for their loyalty to anything but it’s practitioners.

Hope and change, anyone?

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And the stink from this rotten garbage of a “bailout” just keeps on growing.

Thanks to a lot of diligent and exhaustive work from the conservative blogosphere, it is becoming more and more clear everyday that there is a lot more of a political tinge showing up when it comes to those Chrysler dealerships that are being shuttered, stolen or just flat out bullied by this administration.

As if breaking federal contract law with secured bond holders, preventing the company from going through the normal channels of bankruptcy, handing over large percentages of the company by fiat to heavy-money union heads and operatives, while also waltzing into corporate offices and firing the CEO is not enough, now we have some naked graft showing itself in spades over this whole episode.

As detailed in the report snippets below, it now appears that there is a lot of favoritism going on behind the scenes when it comes to just whose car dealership’s ox will be gored and whose will not be.

From Red State:

Since Doug Ross reported that many of the dealers on the list of Chrysler outlets to be closed were donors mostly to Republicans, attention has now been focused on the list of dealerships which are slated to remain open. Some preliminary findings, as well as related news, have bombshell potential.

First of all, bear in mind that these early findings are only preliminary, and the entire list has not been researched. It’s a process which takes time, but several people are on the case. Joey Smith is one of them, and he’s set up a website where you can track his progress. Gateway Pundit has also been following the story here and here.

Joey’s first big find involves RLJ-McLarty-Landers, a company which operates six Chrysler dealerships in the South and lower Midwest. All six of the dealerships have been chosen to remain open. Most interesting about the partnership, however, are the partners. RLJ-McLarty-Landers is owned by Steve Landers, Thomas McLarty and Robert Johnson. Who are these guys?

Landers is a big-time, fourth-generation auto dealer. In addition to the six Chrysler dealerships, he has a number of other car franchises, including Ford and Toyota dealerships in Little Rock, and he also acquired the Harley Davidson dealership there.

Little Rock is Bill Clinton’s old stomping ground, and lo and behold, the Thomas MCLarty who is the second partner in the group is “Mack” McClarty, a long time Clinton associate who served the former president as chief of staff during their days in the White House.

The third partner in RLJ-Mclarty-Landers is Robert Johnson, who founded Black Entertainment Television and is a co-owner of the Charlotte Bobcats of the National Basketball Association.

The Astute Pundit found a very interesting story from Reuters that reports that Chrysler themselves did not approve of the closings:

From the story:

NEW YORK, May 26 (Reuters) – A lawyer for Chrysler dealers facing closure as part of the automaker’s bankruptcy reorganization said on Tuesday he believes Chrysler executives do not support a plan to eliminate a quarter of its retail outlets.

Lawyer Leonard Bellavia, of Bellavia Gentile & Associates, who represents some of the terminated dealers, said he deposed Chrysler President Jim Press on Tuesday and came away with the impression that Press did not support the plan.

“It became clear to us that Chrysler does not see the wisdom of terminating 25 percent of its dealers,” Bellavia said. “It really wasn’t Chrysler’s decision. They are under enormous pressure from the President’s automotive task force.”

He added the government task force, which he criticized for having no members with retail experience was, in effect, attacking U.S. entrepreneurs.

“What is the next task force? Shoe stores? Pizzerias?” Bellavia said at an event in Manhattan to publicize the dealers’ concerns ahead of a bankruptcy court hearing.

And later:

‘UNCONSTITUTIONAL’

“I think it’s unconstitutional,” said Jim Anderer, owner of Island Jeep in Lindenhurst, New York.

“The Fifth Amendment clearly states you cannot take another person’s property without due process or compensation. Even in eminent domain, there is an appraised price on the property
being taken by the state.”

Anderer said he has been in business for 22 years and employs 48 workers. He intends to fight the plan.

“My business is being stolen from me under the guise of the bankruptcy laws, given to another dealer down the street,” Anderer said.

Damn right it is unconstitutional. This is just like Mugabe seizing (mainly white) farms owned for generations by force and giving them to political and personal friends and relatives. The parallels are striking.

Doug Ross, who first blew the whistle on this case back on the 25th, has a followup, showing pretty clearly that a good number of these closings have been politically (and financially) motivated:

Dealers on the closing list donated millions to Republicans, $200 for Obama

The initial pass at the list of shuttered dealers showed they had donated, in the aggregate, millions to Republican candidates and PACs and a total of $200 to Barack Obama.

In fact, I have thus far found only a single Obama donor ($200 from Jeffrey Hunter of Waco, Texas) on the closing list.

Another review of all 789 closing dealerships, by WND, found $450,000 donated to GOP presidential candidates; $7,970 to Sen. Hillary Clinton; $2,200 to John Edwards and $450 to Barack Obama.

Now, and this is important, Chrysler claimed that its formula for determining whether a dealership should close or not included “sales volume, customer service scores, local market share and average household income in the immediate area.”

Dealer Jim Anderer told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto he can’t comprehend how his dealership can be among those killed: he stated that his sales volume ranking is in the top 2 percent of all dealers.

Furthermore, Anderer says explanations aren’t forthcoming. “They won’t tell us. They seem to be running for cover right now because they won’t give us a solid explanation. They come up with all these reasons, but none of them seem to make sense… This is insanity. The government is stealing my business. And they’re telling me there’s nothing I can do about it… There was no process that you could put your finger on and say, ‘Hey, we cut 25 percent of the lowest performing dealers.’ They didn’t do that. Nobody will give us a real clear explanation of the formula that they came up with.”

And Michelle Malkin reports this from BizJournals.com

U.S. Sens. Claire McCaskill and Kit Bond wrote a letter Friday to President Barack Obama’s auto task force seeking answers to concerns raised by Chrysler and General Motors dealerships in Missouri that learned last week their contracts will be terminated.

Auto dealers statewide have expressed frustration to McCaskill and Bond about the lack of information they have received from Chrysler and GM, saying they didn’t know the criteria used to make the contract termination decisions.

The two Missouri senators asked the task force for the criteria used to determine how many and which dealerships would be terminated, as well as the process for dealerships to appeal decisions.

“Many Missouri dealers are asking us why certain profitable dealers, costing the auto companies nothing, were selected for closure,” McCaskill, a Democrat, and Bond, a Republican, wrote to White House car czar Steve Rattner. “From this perspective it appears an arbitrary standard may have been used to make these decisions … these dealers deserve a little more than just a pink slip in the mail.”

Banks, mortgage houses and the auto industry. All now under the thumb of a few white-collared, politically-charged thugs. Mussolini would be damn envious of this kind of power.

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