Bloggers raise money for Palin defense fund

A coalition of bloggers is appealing to supporters of Gov. Sarah Palin for donations in a week-long effort to raise more than $500,000 to help her pay her legal bills.

Spearheaded by web site Conservatives4Palin, the bloggers launched their fundraising webathon Monday in a coordinated effort to help retire the Alaska governor's legal debts.

The webathon is using professional-quality videos which call the ethics complaints filed against the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate "petty politics and frivolous attacks" and a "thermometer" graphic that displays how close the bloggers are to reaching their goal.

The legal fund, called the Alaska Fund Trust was created in April to cover Governor Palin's expenses in defending herself against those allegations.

In a telephone interview with Anchorage television station KTUU Monday, Fund trustee Kristan Cole says the webathon is having an impact:

"Any time the governor is mentioned, the volume goes up tremendously and so the volume -- given this new information going out this morning, and the videos that are on the Web site -- we have seen the volume go up tremendously as we do anytime the governor is mentioned,"

According to the thermometer graphic displayed on the bloggers' websites, $54,645, or about 11 percent of their goal of $500,000, was raised on the first day.

"We are happy to help in any way that we can," Rebecca Mansour, one of the site's main contributors, said. "This is a completely grassroots effort. We are just trying to get the message out just to help them advertise."

Although Cole declined to say how much money has accumulated in the fund so far, she said the fund's first disclosure report, scheduled to be released next month, will reveal that information.

- JP

Wright and von Brunn like-minded about the Jooos

Scrawled on a notepad found in the car of Holocaust Museum shooter James von Brunn Wednesday:

"Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do."

Spoken to reporter David Squires by President Obama's former mentor, counselor and pastor the same day:

"Them Jews ain't going to let him [President Obama] talk to me."

Leftist bloggers and the government-run media would have you believe that von Brunn has more in common with "right-wingers" (libspeak for "conservatives") than with any other group.

But these quotes are evidence of a certain like-mindedness between the shooter and the neo-Marxist pastor of the church Barack Obama used to attend before his inauguration as this country's 44th president.

Both are racists who hate Jewish people. Both adhere to variations of socialist doctrine. Conservatives recoil in horror at both racism and socialism. These are not our people. Those pointing their fingers at the right over the madman who killed Stephen Tyrone Johns, the good man who tried to be helpful to von Brunn by opening the museum door for him, should look closer to home.

- JP

Palins: 'No intentions' of giving Dave a rating boost

Via Fox News:

Statement from Meghan Stapleton, Palin spokesperson
Today at 8:08am

"The Palins have no intention of providing a ratings boost for David Letterman by appearing on his show. Plus, it would be wise to keep Willow away from David Letterman."

A major alphabet network late night host, drunk on the arrogance of a freshly-negotiated contract, started a public battle with the Palins that he can't win. A sincere, no excuses apology is his only way out. Give it up, Dave. Apologize. Now.

Major sponsors are already trying to pass the buck to local CBS affiliates. Why? Angry fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and grandparents of young girls are putting pressure on the sponsors, the network and their local CBS stations. It's working.

Update: Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, a national women's public policy group, called on David Letterman today to formally apologize.

- JP

Dealergate 10: The cost of closing dealers

The closing of Chrysler and GM dealerships is going to be an expensive process for Americans. The taxpayers have already been fleeced of billions of dollars to put Chrysler and GM under the thumb of the federal government, but it will be difficult to estimate the additional costs of closing 789 Chrysler and 1200 GM dealers.

The most obvious costs will be those incurred by job losses at the auto outlets which are being forced to give up their franchises. The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) estimates that 40,000 people employed by Chrysler dealerships will be out of work, and another 60,000 former employees of the closing GM outlets will lose their jobs. That's about 100,000 paychecks that will not be deposited in banks and will not be spent in towns and cities across America. It will have an impact on thousands of grocery stores, discount stores, restaurants and other local businesses. Those former dealer employees who do not quickly find other employment will not only be tightening their belts, but many will be applying for benefits which tap funds already hit hard by Obama's record unemployment numbers, the worst this country has seen since Ronald Reagan cleaned up after the unnatural disaster that was Jimmy Carter.

Local businesses will also suffer from the loss of direct business that resulted from trade with the doomed dealerships. Office supply stores, for example, provide auto dealers with printed forms, letterhead, such big items as top-of-the-line copiers and such small ones as paper clips. Entrepreneurs who had contracted with the auto outlets to support computer software and hardware will be hard hit. Companies which supplied and cleaned uniforms and shop towels for the dealers will lose some of their best customers. Vendors who sell specialty promotional items with the dealers' names on them like license plate frames, dealer badges and ball-point pens will lose business. Other affected enterprises provided janitorial services, mowed the grass, serviced the vending machines, cleaned the windows and hauled away the many gallons of used motor oil for recycling. Also feeling the pinch will be auto parts stores that depend on new car dealers for a significant portion of their commercial sales. Hurt especially hard by the closings will be local newspapers, television and radio stations. Car dealers are the among the major advertisers for these media outlets. Expect the Sunday classified section in your local paper to be thinner. Many affected businesses will raise the price of their goods and services to try to compensate for their losses.

The intrusion by the federal government into the car business will have a substantial negative impact on state, county and municipal government also. States will lose licensing fees, while cities and counties will notice a decrease in tax revenues. Business taxes, property taxes, sewer taxes, etc. will all be affected. City-owned utilities will be impacted, as dealerships are good customers for electricity and water. Many municipalities and counties will try to make it up by increasing their tax rates, not a popular proposition in these tough financial times.

Local clubs, schools, charities and other organizations will lose a source of their revenue. The local car dealer could always be counted on to buy an ad in the high school newspaper and yearbook, purchase a sign for the fence at the Little League ball park, sponsor a sports team, furnish a shiny new convertible or two for local parades and help raise funds for numerous charities. The Rotary Club, Lions Club, Optimist Clubs and Chambers of Commerce will miss these dealers also, as their owners and many of their employees were not only members of these organizations, but conspicuous among their leadership as well.

We have discussed some of these costs in our previous posts on the closings of car dealers, but there's one huge price we have not yet addressed, and that's the cost to consumers. According to a recent report, auto companies and analysts agree that consumer prices on some models will increase by several thousand dollars simply due to the paring down of the car dealer networks:

Remaining dealerships will be able to charge more for cars, analysts say, because fewer dealerships make it harder for buyers to spark bidding wars. And as auto companies scale back factory production, heavy discounts and dealer incentives will dry up.

Tom Wilkinson, a GM spokesman, said once the "current glut" of car brands disappears, prices for GM cars will increase anywhere from $2,000 to $6,000 for a new vehicle.

Chrysler expects to see a price increase on new cars in the range of $1,000 to $2,000 over the next year or two, said Kathy Graham, a company spokeswoman.

New cars and trucks, which will already have higher list prices thanks to Obama's much more restrictive fuel economy and emissions (CAFE) standards, will have their sticker prices bumped even higher thanks to the smaller number of dealers which will result from his auto task force's insistence that GM and Chrysler close a large number of their existing dealerships. As other installments in this series have shown, the process of deciding which dealers stay and which ones go shows evidence of being influenced more by political considerations than by economic factors.

Meanwhile, the dealers, with NADA's backing, are fighting back. The U.S. Supreme Court, which needs time to consider creditor concerns, has stayed the deal which would hand over a considerable share of Chrysler to Italy's FIAT. Thanks to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the dealers get at least a brief reprieve.

Congressional scrutiny of the Obama administration's intrusion into the auto industry is also growing, and the concerned congressmen are Democrats. Reps. Frank Kratovil Jr. of Maryland and Dan Maffei of New York introduced the Automobile Dealer Economic Rights Restoration Act Monday afternoon. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen are co-sponsors of the measure, which would restore "the economic rights" of the dealers as they existed before the automakers filed for bankruptcy protection. It would also require the automakers to reinstate franchise agreements for those dealers who request it.

All it took for the congressmen to get into the fight was the considerable influence of Jack Fitzgerald, who owns 13 dealerships in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Florida. Mr. Fitzgerald got double-tapped on the dealer closings because he sells both GM and Chrysler brands. The Maryland mega-dealer has characterized the dealer terminations as "one Wall Street crowd taking care of another Wall Street crowd. It's big capital beating up on little capital."

In the Senate, meanwhile, Lamar Alexander (R-TN) has authored a bill to turn over control of two of the three Detroit automakers to the 140 million Americans that filed tax returns last year. The stock certificates would be "redistributed" once GM and Chrysler emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy. Joining Alexander in sponsorship of the measure are Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT). Alexander, who is Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, says his bill would prevent government intervention in day-to-day business, while quickly returning the companies to the marketplace.

Now all three branches of the federal government are involved in Dealergate. You know Obama and his auto task force have overreached when members of his own party in Congress start to put up a fight against him. Will the legislative branch Davids be able to knock the executive branch Goliath off his feet? Will the judicial branch relent and allow the sale of Chrysler to an Italian company? Perhaps we will have an answer when Dealergate 11 is written.

Closing Footnote: Did we mention that FIAT, the company the Obama administration pushed Chrysler into a hastily-arranged shotgun marriage with, has the lowest owner satisfaction scores in all of Great Britain? Just another brilliant move by our genius president. Quality control and owner satisfaction issues are partly responsible for Chrysler's predicament, and FIAT, which many unhappy owners say is an acronym for "Fix It Again Tony," seems an unlikely partner to help Chrysler improve in that department.

Watch this space. Things are bound to get, as Alice once remarked, curiouser and curiouser.

Update: SCOTUS, without dissent, has cleared the way for the Chrysler deal to go through.

- JP

Dealergate 9: Question the 'auto task force tyrants'

As we reported yesterday, even some Democrats are beginning to question President Obama and auto his task force. They can't understand why profitable, top-performing Chrysler dealers are being forced to close their doors. We've been asking this and other questions about the Dealergate scandal for weeks, and we're encouraged to see some House Democrats finally getting curious about how the decisions were made regarding which dealerships would stay and which would go.

Any number of factors could have contributed to open these Democrat's eyes. For one, this dealer closing business doesn't pass the smell test, no matter on which side of the aisle a Congressman may be seated. Perhaps the three listened to their Republican colleague Ted Poe, who represents the Second District of Texas. In a recent speech from the floor of the House, Rep. Poe delivered remarks which contained enough red meat to open more than a few pairs of eyes.

Mr. Poe told the story of Rogers Dodge, an Alvin, Texas dealership in his district which was on the closing list despite the fact that the franchise managed to increase its sales by 50% in the first four months of the year, while district sales are down by the same amount. This led Rep. Poe to ask:

"What is the criteria for closing down these dealerships? The auto task force gang picks winners and losers, but they refuse to tell America how those decisions are made. Well, neither they nor the administration are talking. The blissful silence makes us wonder what is going on."

The Congressman had some harsh words for President Obama's auto task force, a panel which answers directly to the White House, but operates free from the constraints of transparency or congressional oversight:

"Chrysler, an American institution, is no longer being run as a private sector company. It's been taken over by the auto task force tyrants, appointed personally by the administration. These individuals tell Chrysler what to do, and they have to do it because Chrysler took all that bailout money before it went into bankruptcy. Now the auto task force gang gets to run the company. And by the way, Mr. Speaker, we still don't know where that wasted bailout money went."

Rep. Poe gave a shout out to the Dealergate bloggers and the handful of reporters and editors who shined a light on the scandal:

There are reporters and bloggers around the country who have been digging through lists of donations reported on the Federal Election Commission website. They have been comparing donor names on the lists with the names of the owners of Chrysler dealerships that have been forced to close...

Did this group of auto task force individuals discriminate against Republican dealerships in Chicago-style paybacks? We don't know... Campaign contributions seem to be the common thread in all of these ordered closures. That's some coincidence.

The Texas congressman told his colleagues that now it's not just some bloggers and a few reporters and congressmen who have questions about Dealergate:

The American people are starting to ask a few questions of their own. Are these auto task force tyrants picking winners and losers based on campaign contributions? Does the administration have a Nixon-style enemies list? All these questions because the auto task force guys aren't talking, and aren't telling us why they closed down certain dealerships and why they let others remain open.

What made Dealergate inevitable, regardless of what will be proven and what will remain open to question, is the very process of allowing the federal government to inject itself into the affairs of the private sector to manage businesses, something completely foreign to the U.S. Constitution and the very principles upon which the founders created their new republic. Everyone seems to recognize this excpept for "constitutional scholar" Barack Obama and the merry band of thieves that is his administration. Rep. Poe concluded:

"We are now living in a time when the government controls both Chrysler and GM, which we should now call Government Motors. And the government alone, not the free market, decides who wins and who loses, who stays in business and who must be forcibly closed down. Meanwhile 100,000-plus Chrysler and GM workers at auto dealerships who did nothing wrong will be out of work on June the 9th, thanks to government control. So much for the promise of new jobs. And that's just the way it is."

- JP

Cross-posted at RedState.com

Dealergate 8: Look who's concerned now

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer and Reps. Chris Van Hollen and Daniel Maffei, in a letter today to President Barack Obama, expressed their "growing concern" over the closings of GM and Chrysler dealerships. Moreover, the three congressional Democrats say they want to hear a "compelling justification" how closing healthy dealerships will improve the ailing automakers' fiscal situation. The three were asking their colleagues to sign their letter today.

The full text of the letter is posted at Politico.com, but we have singled out some excepts that are quite revealing:

"We are writing to express our concerns about General Motors’ and Chrysler’s decision to close profitable automobile dealerships across the country, and urge you to ask GM and Chrysler to delay final action on proposed closures pending further review of the decision to consolidate dealerships and the process by which Chrysler and GM selected the dealerships to close."

As Mainstream Texas Conservative, some of our fellow bloggers and the dealers themselves have maintained all along, it makes no sense to put some of your best dealers out of business. Many of the dealerships being closed are among the cream of the crop in terms of profitability, sales volume, customer satisfaction and other key criteria the companies insist determined which franchises made the cut. Now, some top House Democrats are saying the same thing.

In the second paragraph of the letter, the congressmen state:

"We also question the criteria being used to determine which dealerships should be closed and the fundamental fairness involved in this effort."

As have we, though we see slightly different motivations behind the selection process used to pare down the dealer networks:

"...we are concerned that manufacturers are closing profitable dealerships to circumvent current contracts which could require expensive buy-outs under normal conditions. We are also concerned about allegations that dealers that have previously stood up for their rights against the manufacturers are being targeted by these closures."

We can't help but fundamentally disagree with these three Democrats, however, on what they believe will be a major step toward cleaning up this Dealergate mess:

"We believe that the forced closures of profitable dealerships needs to be scrutinized by the Task Force to prevent additional future financial loses to General Motors and Chrysler and job loses across the United States."

No, Congressmen. The president's task force is part of the problem, not the solution. You gentlemen, as representatives of the people, have the authority to launch a full congressional investigation into how Chrysler and GM dealers were targeted for closing. That's your job, not that of President Obama's auto task force. If you do not exercise some oversight and do it now, nothing about this broken process will be fixed.

- JP

Cross-posted at RedState.com

Dealergate 7: Hell to pay

Since we last checked in on the Dealergate fiasco, the new media has been busy doing the work old media reporters should have been doing all along. Obama sycophants on the Left end of the blogosphere continued with their "nothing to see here, folks" defense of their beloved savior-president. And Chrysler dealers on the closed list offered evidence in court that most had sales figures and customer satisfaction ratings above the norm for all MOPAR dealers. But could all this just be trees, and could they be obscuring our view of the forest?

Zero Hedge, which had undercounted dealers who made political donations in their first stab at crunching the data, decided a new approach with less chance of misinterpreting the data was needed. Chrysler insists that it had established criteria for closing dealerships based on sales volume, price, customer satisfaction and service department performance. These criteria were incorporated into two Chrysler programs - Project Alpha and Project Genesis - for evaluating its dealers and deciding which ones would be terminated and which were allowed to hold on to their franchises:

"So in the event that retained dealers were not Genesis compliant while cut ones were, this would demonstrate that there was, in fact, more here than meets the eye."

ZH researcher Marla is working on this right now. What got her interested in pursuing this particular line of inquiry? From the bankruptcy proceedings, the sworn testimony of a dealer in Little Rock, where she has connections:

On May 13, 2009, I received a letter from Chrysler notifying the Dealership that Chrysler had elected to “reject” our Dealer Agreement. I am obviously very familiar with the Little Rock, Arkansas dealer network and was surprised because both Cook and Crain, the only Chrysler dealers in Little Rock, were both rejected. Therefore, Chrysler’s action would, on its face, result in a complete lack of representation in a major American city. Since that would be a ludicrous result, one can only infer that Chrysler has a more sinister motive.

Because it is inconceivable that Chrysler will not have a dealership in Little Rock going forward, the only conclusion that one could draw is that, after review, the evidence in other markets in the region, that Chrysler now intends to “give” the Little Rock market to a Landers-related dealer.

Having reviewed the pattern of assumption and rejection of dealers throughout their region, I have detected a pattern: In every market where there is a dealership connected with former Penske Automotive executive Steve Landers, or his new automotive partnership with “Mac” McLarty (former Chief of Staff for President Clinton) and Robert L. Johnson (majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats), the competitors are rejected.

In the Little Rock, Landers Chrysler Dodge Jeep is located far out of town in Benton, Arkansas. Nevertheless, the two Little Rock dealers, Cook and Crain were rejected.

In the Fayetteville, Arkansas area, Landers-McLarty Dodge Chrysler Jeep is located far out of town in Bentonville, Arkansas. Competitors Springdale Dodge Chrysler, Steve Smith County Jeep and Jones Brothers were all rejected.

In the Shreveport, Louisiana market, Lee’s Summit Dodge Chrysler Jeep (a Landers McLarty dealership) is located in Bossier City, Louisiana. Both competitive dealers, Claude de Beaux in Vivian, Louisiana and Greater Birmingham Dodge Chrysler in Shreveport were rejected.

In the Springfield, Missouri market, Tri-Lakes Motors (a Landers-McLarty dealership) is located in Branson, Missouri. Competitors Heritage Chrysler Jeep in Ozark, Missouri and Ramsay Motor Company in Harrison, Arkansas were rejected. A pattern seems to be emerging. Everywhere there is a Landers-McLarty dealership, Chrysler has rejected the competition.

In the Huntsville, Alabama market, Landers McLarty Dodge Chrysler Jeep, is located in Huntsville. Competitor Cloverleaf Chrysler Dodge Jeep was rejected.

Favoritism and cronyism towards preferred dealer group is not a valid exercise of business judgment.

Ah, Landers, Mclarty and Johnson -- now where have we heard those names before? Joey Smith and Doug Ross had first found and exposed the favorable treatment RLJ's dealerships had received, and now testimony has been given in a court of law that, as Doug says, "aligns almost precisely with the findings that Joey Smith and I championed." Interestingly, it was ZH's decision to include primary owners (such as Landers) and exclude those individuals who were not majority owners (such as McLarty and Johnson) which caused donors to Democrat candidates and causes to be undercounted in their first run through the data.

Another continuing line of investigation into the dealer scandal involves dealerships owned by individuals who are members of minority ethnic groups. Tom Lamb, who blogs at It's a Kwazy Life, began working on this aspect of Dealergate last month and found that of the minority-owned dealerships in the Chrysler dealer network, Hispanic-owned outlets were closed at a higher rate than were African-American-owned dealerships. As Doug observed, "When dealerships had to be closed, it would appear political correctness trumped merit."

But what is being obscured by all of this is one basic question, and I still have not heard a satisfactory answer to it. Is it really necessary to have to close all these dealerships? A Bloomberg report indicates that may not be the case:

"There’s the school of thought that if [GM and Chrysler] want to emulate the success of brands like Toyota and Honda they should emulate their dealer structure," said Jack Nerad, an analyst for car-pricing company Kelley Blue Book in Irvine, California. "That certainly seems to be the view of the automotive task force."

Nerad was referring to President Barack Obama’s car task force, which steered Chrysler into bankruptcy on April 30 and set a June 1 deadline for GM to finish restructuring outside of court. The panel said it wasn’t involved in the dealer cuts.

[...]

Dumping dealers isn’t part of the cuts in costs and debt at GM and Chrysler. Instead, "underperforming" stores, as GM put it, were targeted to ensure the automakers’ future retail networks will be stronger for when the companies reorganize.

Both GM and Chrysler, as well as Obama's auto task force, have maintained that the automakers needed to shed dealers because the outlets have been costing the companies too much money. Mark LaNeve, GM’s North American sales chief, whether wittingly or unwittingly shot that excuse full of holes:

"Too many dealers, in actuality, is not the problem," LaNeve said on a May 15 conference call. "We've got too little industry and too little sales we have to contend with."

Whoa, wait a minute. We've heard dealers say that, but this is the first time to my recollection that a member of the corporate management team has admitted it. The man in charge of GM sales in North America says that too many dealers is not the problem, while the government panel directing the dismantling of both companies and the official line being spouted by the companies maintains otherwise. Who has it right here? A car guy or a committee of people who don't know anything about the auto business and the companies who are subservient to it?

To answer that question, we need to know how much dealers cost the car companies. Watch the video of this report from Chris Cotter of Fox Business, as he relates that closing the dealerships "will do absolutely nothing to affect Chrysler's bottom line":

"These dealerships are all self-contained. The buildings they own are leased. The vehicles are essentially owned by Chrysler Financial. They pay on the note. All their marketing expense, parts, service, all contained within the dealer. So there's a lot of misunderstanding out there of what good that will actually do, and in some cases, many people feel like it will even do harm."

Yesterday we reported on some of the harm that closing dealerships is causing.

Let's review. Dealers pay for the franchises, training, special tools and equipment for the shop (the mechanics pay for their own tools), etc. So we see that dealers actually cost Chrysler relatively little money, and closing them will not, as the dealer in the report said, affect the corporate bottom line.

So why close any dealers at all? The answer is that some dealerships have to be closed so that the ones remaining will be more profitable. But if that's the case, then why, as evidence presented to the bankruptcy court clearly shows, are many very profitable dealerships which fit Chrysler's own profile for staying open, being closed instead?

So far, Chrysler hasn't been able to answer that question. When you ask the Obama administration the same question, they refer you back to Chrysler. The anecdotal evidence overwhelmingly says that there is no good answer to the question, which leaves only bad ones.

As a number of bloggers and Chrysler dealers who are having the rug pulled out from under them have maintained all along, the appearance is that politics is playing a major role in determining which MOPAR dealers are being shut down and which ones are being allowed to retain their franchises. The administration's apologists at HuffPo and other Obama fan sites dismiss this, but they won't address the facts which have been brought to light by a relatively small but dedicated group of bloggers. We eagerly await the results of Zero Hedge's test of Chrysler dealerships to determine if the ones being shuttered fit the criteria laid out in the company's Project Alpha and Project Genesis programs. If they do not, there will be hell to pay.

- JP

Cross-posted at RedState.com