Mea maxima culpa

Finally, if Republican donors exceed Democrat donors by a 10:1 margin all things being equal the results should show a 10:1 closing ratio and a 10:1 open ratio; however, if these numbers greatly diverge say 9:2 open then it can safely be assumed that dealers were closed by a method other than simple probability. I would suggest we will find out that there is some fade to the Democrat dealerships remaining open. I am just guessing and I wait to see the results of the analysis.

BTW, you can not simply take a sample population of randomly chosen dealerships N=<50 and expect that it will show a definite case either way. You need to do the entire population and also compare on a regional and local level.

Anecdotal evidence isn’t helpful. There are hundreds of dealers on each list. Three or four standouts isn’t meaningful.

No information about the closing dealers means ANYTHING unless compared with information about the dealers remaining open.

As for Nate Silver, the fact that he used a HuffPo site is not a valid criticism of his work. I just redid it with OpenSecrets and got similar results.

The criticism of Nate Silver is that he didn’t look at the actual dealers affected, he just looked at car dealers in general. Interesting numbers, but not relevant.

We HAVE all the names. We can look them up. Every one. Then, if there is a pattern, it’s time to raise hell about it. But before then, making noise isn’t helpful, because without ironclad evidence, it comes off as a fringe theory.

–
froid

And no “Sorry if you were offended.” It’s going to be “Sorry that I wasn’t up to the challenge, and thus wasted everybody’s time.”

By the same token, it seems a better business decision to keep a dealer with a presence in multiple cities than a dozen single-city dealers. The multiple-cities dealer gives you one dealer, one inventory, one point of contact, et cetera for the X cities in which they operate.

Trumping all of the above would be, obviously, sales volume. That probably spared a few AND killed a few.

The interesting cases are the three- or four-line dealers that were closed, or the one- and two-line dealers that were spared. I’d be really interested in that information.

The data came in such mangled format that it has to be 100% edited into comma delimited format for import to a spreadsheet..

My understanding is that about 1/3 rd of that conversion has been done.

no worries, my friends, the Unions and Government do a much better job then them, it’s proven…..somewhere….

not.

I don’t know what the total percentage is of dealers making a donation to anyone at all, but let’s say it’s 25%, which would be well above the population average. If that’s the case, we’d expect around 20 Obama donors among the culls. We evidently don’t see that. So how do we get there? My suspicion is that one of two things happened.

1. A list was generated using the criteria they developed, and Chrysler purged the list of owners well connected from it in an attempt to ensure that roadblocks didn’t get thrown up to the plan passing - it would only take a handful to do this, and we know of several already.

2. A list was generated using the criteria they developed, and Chrysler purged the list of minority owners, for fear of diversity lawsuits. This had the side effect of the donation patterns we’re seeing, and quite possibly the red/blue area patterns as well.

If I had to bet money, I’d suspect it was number 2.

There won’t be any criminal charges, and no one of consequence will be forced to resign, because there’s no illegality here. Why? Because there’s no legal framework surrounding any of this. THAT is the problem! The administration has been given free reign over a huge industrial complex and massive amounts of taxpayer money, and there’s no controls, no legal framework, no accountability, and no oversight.

The left spent nearly eight years complaininig about the Bush administrations alleged violations of constitutionality, and here we are turning over a small empire to the President. That sort of unbounded power is exactly what the constitution is supposed to prevent.

The problem here, ladies and gentlemen, isn’t wheather this system was used to dole out patronage, it’s that it can be use for that purpose and there’s nothing illegal about it.

This administration is sounding more and more like Moussolini every day.

Second question: Why are dealerships being closed in the first place? If they aren’t owned by the factory they cost nothing, and their franchise fees provide income to Chrysler. The answer to this one may be revealed by the answer to the sub-question above.

And I suppose there can be a third question: Why are media directors seemingly uninterested in the answers to those questions? The data will be fully available soon, and a straightforward statistical analysis should be legitimate news, yet many people are ready to sweep the issue under the rug on the basis of incomplete data. Maybe Little Green Footballs will have to get on the case.

- JP

Just saying.

- JP