RUSH: Sandy from Albuquerque… She’s there now? Hello, Sandy. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: (silence)
RUSH: Sandy, are you there?
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: Okay, there we go.
CALLER: (garbled)
RUSH: You know what happened there, Sandy? I went to the phones an hour sooner than I usually do, and nobody on the engineering staff was ready. It wasn’t your fault.
CALLER: That’s okay.
RUSH: Wasn’t my fault; it was theirs.
CALLER: I’m sorry, sweetie. I love you.
RUSH: I love you, too.
CALLER. I think you’re the greatest. Hey, listen. I work in the car business. I’ve been in the car business for 30 years.
RUSH: Are you a dealer?
CALLER: No, I am not a dealer. I have been in sales and in management. So I know both ends of the management and the sales department.
RUSH: Yeah, okay.
CALLER: And the dealers that are being closed here in Albuquerque, I don’t understand where they get all this, because some of the dealers they’re closing down here in Albuquerque, they own their own franchises. I don’t understand why you can choose to fire these people, let these people go.
RUSH: Here’s the thing that I want to correct, because the news reports all say, ‘Chrysler closing 3,000 dealerships!’ ‘General Motors announced today gonna close 1,100 dealerships!’ It’s not that. It’s Obama closing dealerships —
CALLER: I know!
RUSH: — and I watched this morning, Sandy, I had the TV on today, and I watched interviews of some of these dealers, and some of these guys are successful. They’re working people; they’re entrepreneurs. They own the dealership, as you said.
CALLER: Yes!
RUSH: The guys I saw today own the dealership, and some of them are doing okay, and they’re being ruined by government, Sandy.
CALLER: Exactly. Obama’s ruining these businesses that are owned by these people. I don’t understand how you can even think about closing something that —
RUSH: Well, he can’t do it. The whole bankruptcy deal with Chrysler is unconstitutional. There’s a contracts clause in the Fifth Amendment. You cannot do what Obama did: forcing primary lenders, debt holders to cave on their contracts. You just can’t use the force and the power of the federal government without giving them commensurate value. This, too, is just the big hand of government directing and swatting people down.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: You ask, how he can do it? He can’t do it, but he’s doing it and getting away with it because nobody’s stopping him.
CALLER: Well, that is pure bull… BS. You know what? You know what, Rush? Some of these people are minimum wage people, and it’s not my dealers it’s closing down. So, you know, I shouldn’t even be concerned. I am concerned! I mean, some of these people on minimum wage people, some of them are the technicians. They work on commission. They don’t get paid. Unless they fix car after car after car, they won’t get paid. Salespeople, it’s the same thing.
RUSH: Look, I sympathize, Sandy, with you, and I sympathize with these people. It is a crying shame what is happening to the US automobile industry. I mean, this really makes sense, doesn’t it? Here, we’re going to save the automobile industry. We’re going to get rid of 4,000 dealerships, making the cars invisible and hard to find and we’re gonna cut our advertising budgets in half, that’s right. And that’s really going to help us sell cars. A tragedy, is what it is.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Steve in the outer banks of North Carolina. It’s nice to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Thanks for taking my call, Rush. I’ve been in the car biz for over 20 years. I’ve worked for major dealerships, General Motors, and wholesale now. I don’t think a lot of people realize what’s going to really hurt the American car companies. When they get rid of these Chevrolet and Chrysler dealership franchises, what’s going to happen is these guys have Nissan and Toyota standing in line just begging them to take a franchise to sell their full-size trucks and what have you, and that’s going to do nothing but kill the Ford, Chevrolet, Chrysler products because they’re going to keep their lots full of something.
RUSH: You know, it’s an excellent point out there, Steve, because I don’t see Obama announcing any Toyota or Lexus or Nissan dealerships being closed — or Volkswagen or any of the others. These are strictly General Motors and Chrysler. And, look, it’s a rotten business model. They’re going to close 4,000 dealerships combined, Obama is, between General Motors and Chrysler, 4,000 dealerships, and cut the advertising budgets in half. So we’re going to make the cars invisible and impossible to find.
CALLER: Oh, I agree, because, like I say, I’ve been wholesaling for the majors, Chrysler and Chevrolet, here for almost 20 years now, and they’re not going to leave their lot empty. They’re going to immediately, as soon as their car inventory gets down they’re going to be contacted almost immediately from Nissan and Toyota to fill their lot. They’re not going to have them sit there empty and that’s going to do nothing but increase their sales and hurt America’s.
RUSH: So what you’re saying is, let’s look at this as a matter of market economics. You’re saying the American people — and let’s assume here that at some point the economy is going to come back and this recession is going to slow and we’re going to start growing again. So you’re saying that an average American economic year, X-number of cars are going to be sold, X-number of cars are going to be bought, new cars.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: So if you take a bunch of Chryslers and Chevys and Cadillacs and take them off the market, a bunch of Chryslers off the market, you’ve got a vacuum of cars that Americans are still going to buy because of the agreed-to number earlier that they buy per annum.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: So they’re going to be filled up by Toyota. You’re calling these ‘foreign cars, right, even though they’re made here?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: How many are going to be made here?
CALLER: Well, you know, they make some of the full-size trucks here, but still, most of the parts and everything are imported from over in China anyway. A lot of the stuff is not made here.
RUSH: All right, let me play devil’s advocate with you here.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm?
RUSH: Take ‘American’ out of the equation here for just a second. The American consumer, in a free market with, you know, trade, fair trade and free trade. The American consumer has been voting by choice anyway over a number of years by buying the Japanese brands over the American brands. Is that necessarily the fault of anybody? I mean, it’s just the way things have happened.
CALLER: Well, no, it’s not their fault. You know, they still try to say they’re made in America and all that have you, but, you know, 90% of parts for even the Frontiers built here in the United States —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — and the Toyota Tundras. With the parts, 90% of them are imported anyway, and just put together here. But, yeah, they’re not going to leave these lots sitting empty missing Chevrolet full-size trucks because, you know, full-size trucks are always going to have a market in the industry because of the construction, when it comes back and what have you. Toyota is already getting ready to come out with something they’ve never had before: a crew cab one ton with a diesel, a Dooley. They’re going to come and they’re gonna really hurt the Ford and Chevrolet market, Dodge, too. They’re not going to leave these big lots sitting empty. These guys have been standing in line for years wanting their business, the Toyota and the Nissan or what have you, to replace what’s going out now.
RUSH: What is your big concern about this? Is your big concern that the American automobile industry, the manufacturing and sales side, is going away?
CALLER: It’s gonna hurt; it’s gonna hurt a lot.
RUSH: Not only is it going away. I’s being forced out.
CALLER: Oh, yeah, it definitely is. When these people ride up and down the highway and, you know, they catch the sight of say a Chevrolet truck, it really catches their eye and they’re in the market. When that truck’s not available to them in the areas where it is now, they’re going to see a lot more Nissan full-size trucks, Toyota full-size trucks, and —
RUSH: Now, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Just a second. Because, in addition to everything else, don’t you know the Obama administration is going to get rid of trucks because they can?
CALLER: Well, that’s fine and dandy. What are you going to do as far as hauling around, you know, a ton of lumber to you job site? (laughs)
RUSH: Well, no, here’s what’s going to happen. What they’re going to do is do the same thing to the automobile business that they are doing in others where they’re trying to bring in all these newfangled new energies.