South Bend Tribune columnist Jack Colwell spent most of his Sunday column praising the bipartisan legislation passed recently that provides a credit for those turning in their “clunker” cars. Jack didn’t make it all the way through without saving some choice words for state treasurer Richard Mourdock, who recently spent $2 million in taxpayer money fighting a personal battle against Chrysler.
Alas, that Hoosier politician who is a real clunker when it comes to saving automotive jobs can’t be junked in the program. The clunker is Indiana’s state treasurer, Richard Mourdock.Both Donnelly and Upton point out that the treasurer’s effort to kill the bankruptcy transaction that is bringing back Chrysler jobs could have led instead to liquidation of Chrysler - and also of General Motors, if the U.S. Supreme Court had agreed with the politically-motivated Mourdock attack on the Obama administration’s efforts to keep Chrysler and GM in business.
Luckily, the inefficient clunker crashed in the Supreme Court. Mourdock’s strange logic, through which Hoosier investors he sought to represent would have ended up with less money in liquidation than through the bankruptcy transaction, didn’t prevail.
Why do we assume that the liquidization of GM or Chrysler is automatically a bad development? When a door closes, a window is frequently opened.
More importantly, Chrysler and GM are not Indiana state’s treasurer concern. Managing the investments of the state of Indiana is. Do you really want to tell the treasurer to balance the State’s interests with the interests of others outside the state?