Saturday, February 06, 2016

since the recession, and the closing of dealerships in 2009, it's been a long time since anyone has looked at the issue of dealerships that were cut off from the GM and Chrysler. Some didn't give up the fight, and won their legal battles, Jim Marsh's Chrysler Jeep in Las Vegas is back in business!

Steve let me know that a dealership he liked was targetted in the the 2009 illegal termination of dealership contracts and subsequent dropping of targeted dealerships while manufacturers claimed the right to confiscate the dealership's customer lists and service records. 

 And by targeted he means MANY of the dropped dealerships were owned by people who contributed to conservative political causes, while not a single liberal donor lost a dealership. 

For everyone who wonders what all this is about, in the USA the government in the past couple decades has degenerated from people who serve the public in order to make their country a better place, to people who never have had a real job, and are parasites on the system, with a lifelong affliction of leeching off the government income through roles in local and national politics. Hillary Clinton for example, or her daughter Chelsea, Hillary has been in politics since Watergate, that's a fact. From high school to senior citizen, she has never had a paycheck from a job, only from the public treasury. 

So, when people like that who rely on their income and wealth being a result of rich donors and campaign contributors who want to be rewarded quid pro quo, get in places of power and influence, they see to it that their wealthy benefactors stay in business, and they make an example of the people of the opposite political party, and push them out of business, or prevent their future successes.

Currently its all about wealthy business conservatives who are basically greedy, and will destroy anything for more wealth so long as they can keep the government from interfering (strip mining, toxic heavy metal result) and the liberals, who seem to be more concerned with social causes like national medical care, preventing pollution, and better education. 

One of these makes incredible amounts of money and tax revenue that the national govt uses to run things, and the other spends it all on things that generate no money, and will make the country better to live in, but much more difficult to rape for greedy businesses. 

Only, the conservatives have forgotten how to stop spending govt funds on the military that is over large for its primary function, and the liberals have forgotten how to make it a better place. Both have wasted trillions of dollars, and screwed up what was recently, a very good place to live and work and made the best stuff  on the planet. Now the USA is 18 trillion in debt to China, the target of every Islamic mass murderer, and consumes the majority of the planets resources without making much besides billionaires and oil spills. 

Jim Marsh Chrysler Jeep in Las Vegas fought to get back his Chrysler franchise: He joined a 2010 lawsuit with five other Chrysler dealers from around the country, and won back the right to reopen after the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio ruled in January 2015 that no state laws prevented the move. 

 The U.S. Supreme Court in June declined to hear an appeal by Chrysler, now known as Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. On Monday, Marsh said he would build a 30,000-square-foot Jim Marsh Chrysler Jeep dealership on 17 acres west of his Kia showroom, and hire about 3 dozen more people. 

Why the fight? Fiat Chrysler reported a 14.6 percent jump in Jeep sales year over year. Meanwhile, sales among dealers of cars and car parts have nearly doubled since the recession. 

Statewide car sales are up 89.3 percent from $176 million in November 2008, according to numbers from the state Department of Taxation.

If you want to get some more background on the situation... strap in, here's the well researched info from Steve: 

While I'm on the subject of Chrysler—that now non-American company of which Fiat owns a majority interest—all those European Themas and Chrysler 300C sedans are built in Graz, Austria by Magna Steyr. 
And they are available there and in Australia with a Mercedes-Benz designed 3.0 L V6 diesel engine, which is not available here. 
The Chrysler 300s that we can get here—you know, "Imported from Detroit"—are made in their Brampton factory in Ontario, Canada, and even then some of the engines come from Mexico. 
The European Lancia and Chrysler Voyagers are also built in Ontario, Canada, and have a VM Motori of Italy double overhead cam common rail design diesel engine as standard. 
Tell me again how much of the Chrysler bailout is helping American workers. No matter what you think of the bailout, in the final analysis it allowed those companies to dump billions of dollars of legally owed debt, renege on contracted labor obligations, cancelled pending lawsuits by car-accident victims and even removed legal responsibility in cases where the victims had actually won damages (Wall Street Journal report).

Given all that, one of the most egregious affronts was the stripping of the property of legal bondholders (much of it held in retirement portfolios), which was then given to union-controlled trust funds without rhyme or reason—or perhaps it was their payoff for not fighting the contract cancellations. Another outrage was the illegal contract terminations and subsequent dropping of targeted dealerships, with GM and Chrysler claiming the right to confiscate the dealership customer lists and service records.

The takeaway is that we the taxpayers (U.S. Treasury) still lost around $14 billion in the whole mess.

http://serviside.blogspot.com/2012/03/even-though-general-motors-bailout.html

Nearly 800 dealers had their contracts voided without due process or hearing of any kind and ordered to turn over their customer lists and service records. One day you are selling cars and the next day you are not.

 Not that many of those dealers were marginal - Jim Marsh certainly was not. Others not on the hit list prospered. (This allowed Towbin Dodge here in Las Vegas to become huge, and they are now the #1 Dodge dealer in the whole country.)

A few of the dealers (mainly the truly marginal ones) just folded up and went away. A bunch more sued to have their contracts reinstated, claiming that they had been stripped of them without due process or compensation - buying a dealership costs big money and now they had no dealership and no money. Again, this was all done without the benefit of bankruptcy court - or any court for that matter - just legislative action.

 The legislation required that GM and Chrysler do the contract canceling, which left them open to breach-of-contract suits (kind of a Catch-22 for car builders).

 After the dealers won the right to reclaim their dealerships in court, the car companies (under government pressure) appealed, but have been losing. Just because Congress passes a law, it doesn't mean it's legal.

 The original bailout deal made some pretty big headlines back when, but all of the fine print details and subsequent lawsuits have been vastly under-reported. Why? Because as soon as Congress finished with this, they turned to ramming through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. You know, as in "if you like you doctor, you can keep your doctor" and "your premiums will go down." 

13 comments:

  1. Interesting set of lies.

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    1. allright. You define the political parties goals and achievements, plus their shortcomings in less than 10 minutes to put a knowledge foundation for readers so they can grasp how and why dealerships were cut off and the big three reason for doing so with their bankruptcy process... lets see your summation be more accurate without getting 5 economics and politics professors to write it for you. Good luck with that

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    2. Oh man, that was some post. When I write something like that, I usually end with the sentence "End of rant" or "Yeah, I feel better now".

      I do agree with you, though.

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    3. thanks Kim, do you have a website?

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    4. Couple thoughts:

      1. HC did earn a paycheck as a lawyer - remember Rose Law Firm? Plus others. I doubt Arkansas or the USA paid her anything as first lady. And your right, we should not pay any salary to our US senators (8 years) or cabinet members (4 years). I'm not sure how Chelsea fits into your argument - except your hatred.

      I'm not sure how any of your Clinton hatred effected Mr. Marsh's dealership closing. For the record the first auto loans and bailouts started under President Bush.

      I'm not an economic or political professor, or a lawyer (above), but every American should know that when Congress passes a law - IT IS THE LAW and legal. Feel free to challenge the law in court - you might be right. I believe its in our Constitution. Easily available online.

      I'm not sure about your 14 billion loss number - but I'll give it to you. How many billions would we have lost without the auto bailout? Our country would have been in a Depression for at least 10 years. How many tens of millions would have lost jobs?

      I've reread your "rant" several time trying to figure out how all of these different points come together. I'm glad you worry about the health of the bond holders. Fine print on the bonds: You get screwed first in any company bankruptcy. Thats why high risk bonds are called "junk bonds"

      Your point I AGREE with you the most is your follow up comment, it's "my blog" and "speak my mind" - I read that in the Constitution as well.

      And your great site – is required daily reading!!

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    5. I did not remember Rose Law Firm... Good point. I don't hate Chelsea, I deplore that the kids of presidents and politicians rarely get a job, and never go into the military. Hence, my mentioning her with the connection and similarity to Hillary in that they never had a job. You've corrected me on that, but I'm stating it in context to my post. Thanks, by the way, for a nice reply. I only wonder why you think I hate the Clintons. To find them hideous and lechorous is not the same as hating them. It's their nature to be useless parasites on the taxpayer, and I find them repugnant. Like a cobra in a kids playground, I have no hatred toward it, but I damn sure want it removed as fast as possible before it kills a kid. So, maybe you can agree that judging me as a person who hates, is your opinion, and not based on any fact. You don't know me, and missed the obvious attitude I have to politicians. I don't hate them, I have a real life. I'm not a Rush, Savage, O'Reilly, etc. who makes a living on politics while not contributing anything. I don't know why you say that politicians should get no pay... but perhaps you are over exaggerating because of something I said... I don't believe they should get as much as they do, it's 2wice what I think they deserve for 90 days work, free plane rides, months of vacation, etc. Get my point? I don't have to be accurate and research every damn number, I'm making a point, and why waste time with a factual accurate number? No one would let a number go by without arguing about it anyway, like the 14 billion. Just let it go, as decide it's close enough, unless you want to waste weeks trying to get a more accurate number that someone else will argue with you about. Allright, how about that bail out. Lets discuss. Options, they fail, they get bailed out. You argue that they must be bailed out.... well, do you believe that there is a reason private companies deserve, or have earned, a bail out? Why? Fuck them. They had the chance to run amuck, and earn preposterous profits, and chose to waste it though greedy golden parachutes for CEOs, as those were the guys making the rules and directing where the grossly high profits were spent/wasted. Fuck them when they destroy themselves and the companies they were paid fortunes to run successfully. When they fucked it up, they killed the goose that laid golden eggs. They killed GM, the biggest company on the planet in the 50s. When they went bankrupt, they deserved to lose it all, and go home to their country clubs to retire. No more sandbox to play in. They fucking torched their companies, and nuked it too, just to make sure it was fucked for good. Why should the country go farther in debt to China to pay off or pull them out? When they die, the organs can be donated to others that can then make a living. Recycle those assets, let something good come of it, and the strong will survive, and the bastards will learn a damn lesson. Fuck up, and get a coffin, not a country club renewal. As for shining a light on Bush? That idiot? Nothing I've said ought to convince you that I have a vendetta against democrats. I'm probably more democrat than republican, but I'm not a jackass who swears allegiance to one, and shoots myself in the fucking head to elect a son of a bitch who is going to fuck up my country because they can't get out of poltiics and off the taxpayer income. Fuck that. Vote for Hillary if you can't understand she is bad, has a history of total fucked up illegal events, and you have some feeling that you owe it to the Dems to keep the republicans out, but I'm not that stupid. I don't vote for the lesser of two evils, I write in vote for Mike Rowe. No more politicians. They are all scum. I want a statesman, and a honest person.

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    6. Back to how many would lose their jobs if GM and Chrysler went bankrupt. Well, that sucks, and some people I'm related to would lose their jobs too. Shit happens. Choose wisely, and survive, or work for a company with one client, and ride that bad choice as long as the company you depend on stays in business. What, you think it matters that GM and Chrysler get a bail out? Nope. 1400 car companies have failed in the USA. You don't care, neither do I. We still made the strongest country and economy in the world from the 1900's until the late 1960s. You are wrong to think an economic staple deserves a bail out, simply because the country has a dependence on that basic business product. They all come and go in time. Adaptation, not strength, is the core of evolution. Those that adapt become stronger and survive, not the biggest and strongest. Think dinosaurs. Dead. Think of the many monopolies that made the USA the greatest, but all failed and went bankrupt. Trains, oil, cotton, corn, iron. So, the govt still wastes money on buses and Amtrak because they were ballsy enough to let public transportation fail. Throwing away money. Going further into 19 trillion dollar deficit instead of cutting the cord. Fuck them. Move on. Any one company could have then bought up all the train tracks, and put in high speed, and we wouldn't be shackled to airliners that are also, bankrupt and dependant on the govt feed bag to keep them alive when their CEOs are sipping champagne at the country club while their companies are circling the drain. Fuck them too. If your business model is doomed, take your lumps, and move on. Some thing will occur that improves the situation, merely from the vacuum that pulls inspiration from the muck. Summed up, all the points come together loosely, the damn car makers screwed up, and the govt let them, and small company owners having to fight for years in court, at their own expense, to prove it, is caused by the car makers and the govt. Both run by billionaires fucking over the people who are right, because the greedy bastards are wrong, but sticking up for each other. Fuck them, and that. Creating and passing a law, by the way, does not make it legal. I direct your attention to slavery. Not legal, but was lawful. And history is full of laws found unconstitutional. So, not legal, just lawful because the fucking lawyers turned politicians, don't have to prove their new bullshit is constitutional before they pass it into law. Reality 101. Thanks for the reply. Very good of you sir. And thanks for the compliment on the blog, good lord, I oughta sell this damn thing if it's that good, and charge to read it!

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    7. and Steve let me know When Congress passes a law it MAY be the law (for awhile), but it is not always legal, especially if you do challenge it court and the courts say, 'No, that's against the Constitution' (i.e., illegal). That is proper redress. I don't have to go online to check the Constitution - I have a copy sitting on my desk.

      The 14 billion loss number came from the sell of the bonds that the government had kept back. The sell was reported widely at the time, although the amount of the loss, if mentioned at all was usually buried way down in later paragraphs. I used the Wall Street Journal as my source because they were honest enough to put the number up front. The number has grown since I wrote that in 2012.

      "Fine print on the bonds: You get screwed first in any company bankruptcy." Agreed. IF they had gone through bankruptcy court. They did not. The bonds were seized as part of the bailout agreement legislated by Congress. It may have been the law, it may or may not have been legal, but it sure as hell wasn't right.

      "How many billions would we have lost without the auto bailout?" We (the taxpayers) didn't have to lose a single penny. There were many options. Ford, after initially asking for help, balked at the draconian requirements of the bailout offer and decided to go it alone. So they tightened their own belt and came out stronger. No jobs lost. No dealerships cut by an obviously partisan politically appointed panel, no bonds or stock seized from anyone, and grandma's and grandpa's retirement portfolios remained secure. Although the rat bastards did just announce a couple of days ago that they will build a new assembly plant in San Luis Potosi, Mexico and expand an existing facility near Mexico City. When everything is up and running in 2018, Ford will be producing another half a million units per year in Mexico.

      GM and Chrysler could have gotten their act together by themselves, as Ford did. Or they could have asked for some breathing room while they restructured by filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Instead, they saw the offer of a Chapter 7 style solution without having to go to court, and that - along with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads (that is, the enormous amount of money being thrown at them by the government) - and wrapped their arms around it.

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    8. plus "Yeah, I remembered her partnership in the Rose Law Firm, but did not say anything because I personally considered that a 'gimme' job, as in, 'Hey big donor, gimmie a legitimate looking job until my next run for office.' "

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  2. Why on earth would you take an otherwise great website, which I frequently visit on a daily basis because of it's great content and turn it into a soapbox for Steve and yourself's political views on the evil government's bailout of the auto industry. If I want to look at this bullshit I will log on to Facebook or Fox news.

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    1. well... sorry to ruin your day when I use my blog, that I alone created, for me, on my dime, with no assistance from you to cover costs, with no subscription fees, registration bullshit, nor outside influence pressure in directing the content, and with out advertising or popups, and speak my mind about a car related matter when I congratulate the Marsh dealership for winning in the 7 year court battles, against corporate illegal manipulation in his method of selling cars and earning a living in the face of politics and not going down without a fight? Who the fuck are you to give me shit about the way I choose to run my site that you get for free? You weren't invited to look at, you weren't teased or cajoled, and you weren't tricked or forced into following along with? I didn't advertise to bring your attention my way, I didn't call you over and sell you a promise to behave one way for your pleasure. Piss off, YOU can't handle me and my content your fucking whiner. I don't give anyone a soapbox for their views, I look up the most well researched and articulated explanation of what caused the problem, and why, and how that happened, so people in other countries can understand what the hell is going on and why I'm putting out a full page on a small car dealership getting their franchise back, and Steve is the guy who put the best explanation out there. You didn't contribute a damn thing to the cause, so find a cartoon channel to look at you pansy ass, when I want to hear how much I've fucking disappointed you I'll ring your fancy little door bell and ask you to come over to critique the collection of all things about the auto enthusiast world that you're getting a free ride to enjoy. Until then, stuff a sock in it, and lump it. Take it down the damn road Archie Bunker so well advised, and dump it!

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  3. Nope. The closest thing I have is a weblog from my Japan trip.

    (www.nimbustripinjapan.blogspot.com)

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    1. That's it! That's where I remember you from! Been a long time!

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