Topic: WorldNetDaily
Molotov Mitchell begins his July 29 WorldNetDaily video with a blatant falsehood:
American businesses are dropping like flies. Across the country, our citizens are being manhandled by this new gangster government. As the new owners of General Motors, the feds recently passed out 3,400 pink slips to dealerships, regardless of their productivity. Thirty-four-hundred dealerships got shut down by Democrats.
In fact, GM is not "shutting down" more than half of its 6,000 dealers -- it is withdrawing the franchise from these dealers to sell some of all of its vehicles, and plans to withdraw them from 1,300 dealers -- not 3,400. An additional 500 dealers will be affected by the shutdown of the Pontiac line and the sale of Saturn and Hummer. The Saturn and Hummer dealers, however, will not close; they will merely will no longer be associated with GM.
Further, not all of the 1,300 dealers will "shut down" as a result of losing a franchise. For instance, one dealer is losing the Cadillac franchise but keeping the Buick, Chevrolet and GMC franchises. And contrary to Michell's assertion, dealers were not shut down "regardless of their productivity." As the Detroit News reported:
GM did not reveal the names or community locations of the dealerships it plans to close, but it did disclose the criteria that it used in reviewing which dealers would be sacrificed:
• 50 percent of the rating was based sales performance.
• 30 percent was customer satisfaction.
• Profitability and capitalization each accounted for 10 percent.Dealers whose score was less than 70 got termination notices.
Another 400 GM dealerships that sold 50 or fewer vehicles a year also got closing notices. Some dealers who were selling non-GM brands lost their dealerships even if they had higher scores, as did dealers with brands that are being phased out, such as Pontiac.
Presumably, dealerships selling non-GM brands will stay in business after losing the GM franchise.
Oh, and most of those dealership cuts were announced in May, before GM filed for bankruptcy and "the feds" became "the new owners of General Motors."
