Collins Report

By Suzanne Eovaldi

“Did you close Chrysler Dealers who were on Republican donor lists?” I asked Obama’s newly appointed car czar Steven Rattner’s private phone line answering device last May 28. No one returned my call.

Even though Rattner is long gone, we need to remember of how American owners of private property were stripped of their legal right of possession and lawful title by a blatant power grab carried out by a far left Democrat White House.

Bill Wallace, owner of the Ft. Pierce Florida Chrysler Jeep dealership ordered closed, opened his files and his heart to me. While years of teaching men gave me an understanding how men guard their emotions and try to reveal neither anger nor elation, the abject pain of what was done to him appeared as his eyes spoke over his voice.
A warning redness, an ever deepening pool of pain in this man’s eyes, caused by his own government, made me a judge’s daughter realize an unconscionable and illegal wrong had been committed.

“The new guy wins everything; the old guy loses everything,” Wallace said, as his posture slumped from the weight of losing his family’s 70 year old business. He told me what was most galling was that his private property had been taken away and no one paid him a penny for the dealership that represented his life’s work. Wallace then reminded me this was being played out 789 times all across America, a country founded on private property ownership.

Getting even with Republicans?

Soon after the Chrysler closings were announced last year bloggers began checking 2008 election donor lists and developed evidence pointing to a preponderance of Republican leaning Chrysler dealer owners among the “closed” list. Of course the media largely ignored this data, but facts are sticky nettlesome things.

Another closed down Chrysler dealership owner, Long Island Jeep dealer Jim Anderer was visibly moved when he appeared on the Neil Cavuto Fox News show. “They never explained to me,” he said. He said if it were true that closed Chrysler Dealers donated more to Republicans than to Democrats, then. . .”that’s insanity. . .a big scandal. This story is so big, bigger than other political scandals,” he said.

Could it be true?

Were the dealerships ordered closed by Obama’s car czar those who donated to the GOP in the 2008 elections?

I contacted closed dealers in Miami and Melbourne. Neither wanted to talk, but a poignant letter written by Dealer George Joseph, which appeared on prisonplanet.com., said it all. “My family bought and paid for this franchise 35 years ago,” he said. He was not given compensation for 125 vehicles, Dodge parts, loss of warranty service, destruction of vendor dealer orders and contracts, nor an ability to sell his new cars as new or remuneration for a mandated multimillion dollar mortgaged renovation.

Bill Wallace also added that because the fired dealers’ means of earning a living were taken away by the U.S. government, they had no way of holding onto the only thing they had left, their real estate.

As we enter the 2010 election cycle, we must never forget that the Chrysler theft of private property was the DEW line for everything else that has happened to us and to our country since that cold January day in 2009.

The question is: Do we love America more than Obama and the Marists in Congress hate our country? If so each of us must stand up and fight to save of liberties.

Suzanne Eovaldi is a retired reporter and Journalism School Professor from the Chicago area now living in Port St. Lucie, Florida.

Yesterday’s Rasmussen Presidential Index had Obama at – 17

This day in history March 7
1850: Senator Daniel Webster gives his “Seventh of March” speech endorsing the “Compromise of 1850” in order to prevent a Civil War. It worked for 12 years.

Have you read this week’s “Betcha didn’t know this..” page? It’s loaded with interesting little “bite size” items you’re bound to enjoy.

Comments on this or any other Collins Report essay can be sent to kcoachc “at” gmail.com