Friday, April 20, 2012

Why I dislike Richard Mourdock

I can't decide if this will be a long post or a short one.  There are so many reasons why I dislike State Treasurer Richard Mourdock that it is hard to categorize all of them.  And to start off at the top, no it is NOT because I am a Democrat and he is a Republican.  I have many Republican friends, sometimes we agree, sometimes not.  Its not even that he beat a Rhodes Scholar (who is now Mayor of South Bend) in the 2010 race for State Treasurer.

Partly is because he is a hypocrite.  He has been running for one office or another literally as long as Dick Lugar has, but he attacks Lugar for being a career politician.  REALLY?  At least Lugar has won all of his races, Mourdock has lost far more than he has won.

For me, a big part of my dislike for Mourdock is what I think of as his attempted murder of Chrysler.  You may recall that Chrysler went through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization.  But Mr. Mourdock made a legal fight, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, trying to kill that reorganization, and spent about $2 million in taxpayer dollars doing it.  Had Mourdock WON that fight, he would have killed hundreds of thousands of American jobs, because there was no other way to reorganize Chrysler other than the way they were doing it.

Why did Mourdock make this fight?  To cover up one of the most idiotic decisions in Indiana political history, and there are plenty of those.  Mourdock had invested Millions from the state pension funds he controls in junk bonds.  These were Chrysler junk bonds.  They were junk bonds because everyone with half a brain knew Chrysler was going bankrupt, so their value was falling like a stone.  The market itself should have warned Mourdock off, but NOOOO, he thought it was a Great Deal.  Hogwash.

Worse, the reorganization was a better deal for creditors than if Chrysler had just been liquidated.  All of this has been covered ad nauseum elsewhere.  So we have this not-so-smart investment decision to invest pension funds in junk bonds, when they should not have been put to that level of risk at all, then a multi-million dollar legal coverup of that investment stupidity, accompanied by legal hogwash from people who don't know the inside of a bankruptcy court.

And there is more, so much more.  On a partisan note, I probably shouldn't bash Mourdock, since Joe Donnelly will (hopefully) beat him come November should the GOP be so stupid as to nominate him.  But I just can't stand to do that.  I don't think he is qualified for ANY office, not even the one he holds.   And I care about my state too much to sit by silently and let them try to elect this moron without me shouting about it.

Rant over.  For now.  Anybody but Mourdock.

1 comment:

  1. Greg,
    Yours was a rational rant. You gave "cogent, well-reasoned argument" (you know the place from which that phrase comes) in support of your position. I am not all that thrilled with Donnelly. He is far better than Mourdock (pronounced "Mor-dock" as in "Mordor" fr "Lord of the Rings" fans). Lugar's loss, however, might put Indiana in play for a lot more Democratic Nat'l Committee money and push a couple of U.S. House seats---the 5th and the 8th come to mind---over to the "D" side. I am not enamoured with the Dems, but all the Republican Party, in its tea party incarnation, is block legislation, cut taxes, and pad the nests of thoe who have really nice nests.

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