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Photoshop credit: George at Elegant Memories

Bloggers are doing excellent work digging into the Chrysler dealership closure list. Yesterday, I cautioned against making sweeping claims that all the dealerships targeted for closure were partisan victims. On the flip side, bloggers are examining the protected dealerships that were spared by the Obama administration.

Joey Smith reports:

In my analysis of the Chrysler dealers that will remain open, I came across one dealer group that stood out to me.

The company is called RLJ-McLarty-Landers, and it operates six Chrysler dealerships throughout the South. All six dealerships are safe from closing. The dealer locations are:

1. Bentonville, AR (northwest Arkansas)
2. Lee’s Summit, MO (south of Kansas City, MO)
3. Branson, MO
4. Olathe, KS (near Kansas City)
5. Bossier City, LA (near Shreveport)
6. Huntsville, AL

The interesting part is who the three main owners of the company are. The owners are Steve Landers (long-time car dealer, 4th-generation dealer), Thomas “Mack” McLarty (former Chief of Staff for President Clinton), and Robert Johnson (founder of Black Entertainment Television and co-owner of the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats).

Doug Ross points to an interesting post by Thomas Lamb on Maxine Waters’ statements regarding minority-owned dealerships.

Stay tuned.

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Related: Plan to ax dealers not Chrysler’s decision -lawyer

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Dear Car Czar, let’s have some transparency, please:

U.S. Sens. Claire McCaskill and Kit Bond wrote a letter Friday to President Barack Obama’s auto task force seeking answers to concerns raised by Chrysler and General Motors dealerships in Missouri that learned last week their contracts will be terminated.

Auto dealers statewide have expressed frustration to McCaskill and Bond about the lack of information they have received from Chrysler and GM, saying they didn’t know the criteria used to make the contract termination decisions.

The two Missouri senators asked the task force for the criteria used to determine how many and which dealerships would be terminated, as well as the process for dealerships to appeal decisions.

“Many Missouri dealers are asking us why certain profitable dealers, costing the auto companies nothing, were selected for closure,” McCaskill, a Democrat, and Bond, a Republican, wrote to White House car czar Steve Rattner. “From this perspective it appears an arbitrary standard may have been used to make these decisions … these dealers deserve a little more than just a pink slip in the mail.”