This country thrives on righteous indignation. Water boarding three evil terrorists is a prime example. I have seen more public indignation in the past year than I’ve seen in my lifetime. The ACLU has a big case load.
We are upset because Nancy Pelosi lied. We had near riots over the AIG bonus payments. Some of us don’t care for TARP money being handed out whether banks want it or not. And, now, they can’t pay it back if they want to. Northern Trust was vilified by the media, Congress, and John Kerry for sponsoring the L.A. Open Golf tournament and entertaining clients, even though Northern Trust did not want or need TARP money. Auto company CEO’s fly private aircraft to Washington, shame on them.
Some believe Obama had no constitutional right to fire the CEO of GM. Some don’t like the favored treatment for the UAW over all other stakeholders in Chrysler and GM. Some don’t think it’s fair for Obama, the new CEO of Chrysler, to dictate Chrysler’s advertising budget.
Hold this thought, since it brings me to my righteous indignation. Guess who one of the sponsors of the Indy 500 was? None other than your own U.S. Postal Service. The same postal service that will lose record amounts of money this year, needs a bailout, an increase in postage, and may stop Saturday delivery. Is there some serious hypocracy here? Obama knows exactly how much Chrysler needs to spend on advertising. Their dealers they are booting have 3 weeks to sell the cars in inventory. Let’s screw them twice. Cancel them, then cut off adverting so they can’t sell the inventory. But, at the same time, step up the advertising and promotion budget at the USPS.
I certainly hope some of you might feel as I do that this is far worse than Northern Trust sponsoring a golf tournament. Northern Trust is a profitable bank and will pay the TARP money back as soon as the government will let them so they can get back to the business of being profitable. The Post Office, on the other hand, has never been a profitable organization and never will be. Who the hell are they attracting by sponsoring the 500? As a retired marketing guy I have a deep sense of suspicion over this sponsorship. I sponsored race cars that ran in the 500. It was a perk for our customers who got to come to the race and meet the drivers and spend time with us. I believe a good investigative reporter, if there were any today, might find a great number of elected officials attended this race.
Let’s see how much media coverage this gets compared to the Northern Trust issue.