Posted on 05/28/2009 7:54:59 AM PDT by icwhatudo
"I talked about Dealergate on Fox and Friends this morning. Will try and get the video clip up later today. I made sure to credit bloggers Doug Ross and Joey Smith, who took the lead in probing the relationship between political considerations and Chrysler dealerships targeted for closure, also Hot Air, which is where the F&F producer saw the story.
The bloggers are continuing their intriguing work. Doug has a new post here shedding more light on Mack McLarty/Robet Johnson’s dealerships. Joey has more info on Lithia Motors here. "
(Excerpt) Read more at michellemalkin.com ...
Steven Pearlstein: Oh, please. What percent of all auto dealers are Republican? I bet its (sic) pretty high."
Instead of betting, why not look into it? Isn't that what a journalist is supposed to do?
Yes. But, you're making a big mistake trying to make a logical argument about a sycophantic liberal press corps.
Pearlstein is one of the worst. He's a "business reporter" who hates Capitalism. Go figure. Kind of like a SCOTUS reporter who hates justice.
Especially a business journalist?
The entire center of the WORLD print press and broadcast press are located in ONE city (NYC)....they are political orgs working for the DNC.
This has been going on for decades, and we must end the careers of these hacks!!!!
The American media is fully corrupted and morally bankrupt now. A sad day in America.
PING!
We will only know the truth when the bloggers finish their work - which must include an analysis of those dealers that have been selected to remain OPEN. That analysis is a large task and, AFAIK, has not been initiated yet. When that effort has been completed we will have the whole story and I'm betting, along with most Freepers, that it will be a damning indictment of the Obama Administration.
Don’t expect Pearlstein to actually do any real reporting, now do you? Of course not. That would be far too professional and competent of him.
The blogs are doing a pretty decent job of gathering the information on this one. As I follow it, now, it’s beginning to look pretty damning for the administration and Chrysler. However, the whole story needs to come out.
What criteria were used to determine which dealerships were to be pulled? I’ve read reports that indicate only those dealerships where used car sales exceeded new car sales, although that doesn’t make a lot of sense, IMO.
Of the population of Chrysler dealerships, nationwide, how many are/were forced or coerced or cajoled into placing larger than necessary new car orders in the 120 day period prior to the BK filing? How many were pushed into making costly dealership upgrades to plant and facility? Of that segment of the population, how many were then slated to be pulled?
Of the dealerships remaining, in the market areas where closures were ordered, how many are Democrat supporters? And, of the dealerships closed, how many were Democrat supporters?
There are still a whole slate of questions to be answered in this debacle. And, it might be that some of the answers end up with BO’s BC...
It’s time to take back the country.
Agree with the caution, but the review has been initiated on the dealers that have been allowed to stay open. The early results of this aspect are what has caused this story to explode today.
My tendency is to keep a skeptical mind- the question Pearlstein poses is the first one I thought of when this first came up as a possibility. But as Malkin points out- wouldn’t you think “professional” journalists would be interested in learning the facts?
What scares me most is that we are now a country without an enquiring press- with the likes of GE money giving citizens a distorted view of reality.
CNBC has a long list of those kind of 'experts' to draw from....explains why CNBC is the #1 'mute button' channel.
“What scares me most is that we are now a country without an enquiring press- with the likes of GE money giving citizens a distorted view of reality.”
An interesting side note. My mom has been in the hospital for a week. GE provides the equipment for the TV control at the bedsides in the hospital. Guess which channel that the volume will not turn up on? Yep..Fox News.
It is like that in every room too because I checked an empty room down the hall. Intentional? I think so...lol. Makes you wonder how many hospitals and institutions across the country that GE is doing this to? This is a huge hospital complex in a major metropolitan area in Texas.
Glad to hear it. What is the best link to the story/data?
"A Word of Caution
A number of blogs are linking my research to a potential "Obama Hit List" similar to Nixon's Hit List.
The research I worked on so far is to analyze the campaign contributions of the closing dealerships. I haven't had sufficient time to look at the dealers that will remain open, but I will investigate further in the coming days.
Until I have conducted more research, please refrain from prematurely claiming that the closing dealership are part of an Obama "Hit List".
Thank you."
Right now the focus is still on the closed dealerships which naturally brings into play those not closed that are in the same geographical area. That is anecdotal and does not look good for Obama. But it is still just anecdotal. In the end we will see the dealerships ranked by DEM, leaning DEM, Independent, leaning REP and REP or something like that. With that data will come the percentages that remain open and closed for each group. That will tell the tale for sure. I think we are a couple of weeks away from reaching that point but it could go faster if others jump in and give Joey some help.
There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that this would turn into a scandal. Obama revels in the chance to screw his enemies. Remember the bondholders who wouldn’t cooperate and the threats they received?
A dealer in the top 2% shouldn’t be closed.
Democrats in charge of penalizing entrepeneurs. Sacre bleu!
While the UAW carries on....
Yes, I read that yesterday when it was posted around 3pm. I also posted, on FR, Malkins words of caution as well (yesterday afternoon.)
What I am referring to is the new info from last night and today about RLJ-McLarty-Landers and other protected dealerships. That new info, on what dealers were protected, is what IMHO has cause this story to break out more.
I agree its still way early and hopefully more will join Mr. Smith in his efforts-I was just trying to point out that the examination of protected dealers has in fact begun but it will take a while to get a full picture.
LOL
Or the local cable provider doesn’t carry Fox. We did without for years here (AK) untill DISH started making inroads.
If you haven't read this, it is a real eye-opener. This is from the Washington Times. I heard Wilkow standing in for Mark Levin a few weeks back, and the guy was phenomenal. But check out the bolded, underlined italicized portion below.
GE a corporate sponsor
By Andrew Wilkow and Nick Rizzuto
Monday, May 11, 2009
For all of the carping liberals did for eight years about corporate cronyism in George W. Bush's White House, they seem to turn a blind eye to the same behavior in President Obama's. With plans in place for a major overhaul in the health-care industry, General Electric is positioning itself to become a major beneficiary of these health care reforms.
Recently at the Business and Social Responsibility Conference, General Electric Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt referred to America's current economic crisis as part of a "reset" rather than part of an economic cycle, saying, "People who understand that will prosper in the future, and people who don't understand that will get left behind."
In the same address, Mr. Immelt, who is also a member of Mr. Obama's economic recovery advisory board, added, "The intersection of government and business will be changed, maybe for a generation." In other words, companies should be prepared to beg for a seat at the government's table if they plan on remaining lucrative.
Imagine that on the eve of the Iraq war, the CEO of Halliburton had declared that since Sept. 11, 2001, the relationship between the government and corporate interests have become one in the same.
Of course, Mr. Immelt's rhetoric about corporate responsibility was undercut last year when GE's once vaunted financial services business, GE Capital, was forced to ask the government for what amounted to a $140 billion government bailout.
Mr. Immelt's words betray GE's willingness to partner with the Obama government in order to turn a profit. To this end, GE has appointed Mr. Obama's former nominee for secretary of health and human services, Tom Daschle, to the board of advisers for Healthymagination, an initiative launched by General Electric in partnership along with Intel, which will invest $6 billion over the next six years on "health care innovation that will help deliver better care to more people at lower cost."
Mr. Daschle said, "We can only find real solutions in health care when business, government and their partners work together."
In 2008, Mr. Daschle wrote the book "Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis" in which he explains his radical solutions to the problems in American health care. In the book, Mr. Daschle calls for a British-style Federal Council on health care.
The profitability of GE's new venture will depend heavily on the nationalization of the health care industry. The standardization and streamlining of health care recordkeeping, something on which Mr. Obama ran in 2008, would require a massive government contract for the technology to achieve such standardization.
Mr. Obama has introduced a plan to computerize all health records within five years. Independent studies from Harvard, Rand Corp. and the Commonwealth Fund have estimated that such a plan could cost at least $75 billion to $100 billion over the next 10 years. Healthymagination is readying just such a technology, claiming that they will seek to "increase the use and capability of electronic medical record (EMR) technology and other information technology." With Mr. Obama's ally Mr. Daschle on board, Healthymagination is sure to have more than a leg up on its competition when it comes time to dole out these massive contracts.
Under the cloak of corporate responsibility, General Electric seeks to benefit to the tune of billions from the passage of Mr. Obama's health care reform. On its corporate Web site, Healthymagination admits it will use every tool at its disposal to achieve its goals, including NBC Universal, the parent company of MSNBC which offers nearly uncritical coverage of Mr. Obama and his policies.
In effect, NBC Universal would become the propaganda arm of the administrations drive for the nationalization of health care, pushing its passage in its print and television properties.
Healthymagination states its target dates for the completion of its various initiatives as 2015, well into a second Obama term. This means GE will have a deep financial interest in Mr. Obama's re-election; a fact that will no doubt be reflected in its media divisions. It will certainly be interesting to see if the left-wing watchdogs howl, or if they will conclude this is an acceptable level of collusion between the White House and a multinational conglomerate.
Andrew Wilkow is the host of Sirius/XM Satellite radio's Wilkow Majority program. Nick Rizzuto is his producer.
No...Fox is on there and you can hear it..it just won’t turn up where you can hear it very well. It’s the only channel where the volume does not work properly. The picture is perfect. This is a major metropolitian area. I suspect GE did the dirty deed when they installed the system at the hospital.
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