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The Copy Reads:
Mediocrity Reborn
Why bother to buy our cars?
You already bought the company.
Make no mistake.
We express sincere gratitude to the American taxpayer.
Your largess, with a little arm twisting by the President,
means it’s business as usual from one of Detroit’s Big Three.
Ditching our securitized debt, dropping Republican dealers
and generally blowing off any obligation we didn’t want to honor,
we are now free to return to the same bad habits
that got us into this mess to begin with.
Our factories are reopening, anxious to slap together
the poorly built cars and trucks that puts us at the bottom
of every quality survey ever conducted.
The same tired models that you wouldn't buy before,
will start languishing again on your local Chrysler dealer lots.
But there’s a difference this time.
With the UAW covering our back, Uncle Sam will continue
to fund our losses for years to come. Or someone else gets elected.
You may choose not to purchase a Chrysler product in the future.
But you’ll have no choice paying for it again and again.
Chrysler Group
Driving American Debt
Whew - I doubt I will be passing this one on! Living in the Detroit area, where about one out of every seven jobs is in autos or auto parts (including my probable son-in-law), I wouldn't be very popular! You know how it goes - when it's in your back yard your perspective changes!
ReplyDeleteAs conservatives, we tend to agree, but it feels diferent when it has a face to it!
B. in Detroit
A correction from me, via WSJ:
ReplyDeleteLast month we noted that some bloggers were suggesting that Chrysler, presumably at the Obama administration's behest, was targeting Republican donors in its decisions about which dealerships to shut down as part of its bankruptcy. Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute has taken a thorough look at the data, and he writes at Forbes.com that the allegations don't pan out:
Of the nearly 3,000 Chrysler dealerships in the country, we successfully matched the owners of 420 to political contributions, using data from the 2008 election cycle. From this list, we considered a dealership to be Republican-owned if the majority owner gave more money to Republicans than to Democrats. Of the 300 Republican-owned dealerships we identified, 77 were on the list of closed dealerships. A dealership was determined to be Democratic-owned if the primary owner gave more money to Democrats than Republicans. There were many fewer, only 120, of these. Car dealers, it turns out, tend to be Republicans.
For the Democrat-owned dealerships, 31 out of 120 were shut down. Comparing those numbers, we found that 25.7% of Republican dealerships were schedule to be closed while 25.8% of Democrat ones were.
That difference is utterly insignificant. Thus, the data indicate that the Chrysler closings did not systematically favor Democrats.
Excellent.
ReplyDeleteChris