Gretchen Carlson Has Questions for Car Czar

Bride of Rove wrote about this interview yesterday and I couldn't believe what I was reading; then Snaggletoothie had the video. H/T to both! Bride linked to this transcript of the radio program which goes into more detail.

There is something seriously wrong if this is allowed to happen. Seriously.



From the radio program - not the video above, this is Beck talking to the Carlsons and to Gretchen:

GLENN: Okay. Now, Gretchen tells me that you guys made the first round of cuts.

CALLER: That's right.

GLENN: And then you didn't make the second round.

CALLER: No. We got the registered letter and the FedEx and the first sentence says we are not renewing your Chevrolet or your Cadillac franchise. And then went on to explain.

GLENN: You've been in business for 90 years?

CALLER: Yep.

GLENN: 103% of goal last year?

CALLER: Yep.

CALLER: And we haven't had a losing month since the Eighties when there was 21% interest rate, you know, on anyone that bought a car. And even through all this, and the interesting thing is that we know for sure that some dealers who were kept are losing money. And the other kind of upsetting thing is the one that was given the dealership back, it seems somewhat political because it's very hard to determine. I don't think any of the big conglomerates, i.e., the dealers who owned six, seven, eight, nine, ten franchises in around the Minneapolis area, this particular person that was cut and was reinstated is one of those. Otherwise it's hard to tell if any of them have lost a dealership. But they have a gag order on you. You are not supposed to tell. And Mr. Henderson said, well, he is not going to tell because he doesn't want to ruin your business. Well, when you get a letter, FedEx on a day that they determine you are going to get the letter, it's only fair to your employees to let them know what it says. We can't go around pretending. Because you can't appeal if you done tell, either. So that's what happened to us.

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GLENN: If you didn't sign the gag order, which means that you're talking now, if you don't sign the gag order, you won't they are saying to you that you can't sell the cars. They're yours, right? You bought them from them.

CALLER: Uh huh.

GLENN: And you won't get any warranties on these cars.

CALLER: What will happen, as I understand it, it's very confusing. I'd have to ask a Chrysler dealer, I suppose, because they are in the middle of it. But I think what you have to do is you have to sell those cars to another dealer or something like that at a loss so that they can then retail the car and cover it with warranties. Once we're terminated, we can no longer do any warranty work, you see. So if we don't sign this thing and send it in, what happens is they will put us in the bankruptcy court and the judge has the authority to probably terminate us within a week, you know.

CALLER: But Glenn, here's the deal. They got a gun to their head because they have to sign this thing by Friday. Keep in mind that they filed an appeal which General Motors, by the way, never even informed them that they could file an appeal. They just happened to find out. They got that in by Monday night. Now you are telling me that of all the GM dealers who have been cut and all the ones that possibly are filing appeals that somebody was actually looking at those appeals on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and giving them an answer back and by Friday they have to sign this agreement or they're dead.

CALLER: Well, and we don't even know to whom we are appealing. That's, we just said to the review committee we don't know if it's the government, we don't know if it's General Motors. We have absolutely no idea. And then at the end when you're all done, you have you're forced to give them your customer, all your customer base and your customer service base and then you have to say, well, that's good; now you've cut us. And if you want to put up someone else three miles from us, we have to agree to that. So it's ...

It's fascism is what it is. It breaks your heart listening to these people. Doug Ross has done an excellent job in covering this DealerGate story; check his site for more info and links. It sure doesn't sound like capitalism in America, that's for sure.


Update - Welcome Doug Ross readers! Thanks for stopping by!)