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holfresh
Posts: 38679 Alba Posts: 0 Joined: 1/14/2006 Member: #1081 |
11/1/2012 8:28 PM
Romney Versus the Automakers
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/opinion/mitt-romney-versus-the-automakers.html?src=me&ref=general Mr. Romney apparently plans to end his race as he began it: playing lowest-common-denominator politics, saying anything necessary to achieve power and blithely deceiving voters desperate for clarity and truth. This started months ago when he realized that his very public 2008 stance against the successful and wildly popular government bailout of G.M. and Chrysler was hurting him in the valuable states of Ohio and Michigan. In February, he wrote an essay for The Detroit News calling the bailout “crony capitalism on a grand scale” because unions benefited and insisting that Detroit would have been better off to refuse federal money. (This ignores the well-documented reality that there was no other cash available to the carmakers.) When that tactic didn’t work, he began insisting at the debates that his plan for Detroit wasn’t really that different from President Obama’s. (Except for the niggling detail of the $80 billion federal investment.) That was quickly discredited, so Mr. Romney began telling rallies last week that Chrysler was considering moving its production to China. Chrysler loudly denounced it as “fantasies,” saying it was only considering increasing production in China for sale in China, without moving a single American job. “I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China,” Chrysler’s chief executive, Sergio Marchionne, said in a statement. “Jeep assembly lines will remain in operation in the United States and will constitute the backbone of the brand. It is inaccurate to suggest anything different.” In fact, 1,100 new jobs will be added in Toledo to produce a new generation of Jeep. The Romney campaign ignored the company, following up with an instantly notorious ad saying President Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China.” If the false implication wasn’t clear enough, the campaign put out a radio ad on Tuesday saying “Barack Obama says he saved the auto industry. But for who? Ohio or China?” What happened, the ad asks, “to the promises made to autoworkers in Toledo and throughout Ohio?” What happened was that those promises were kept. Nearly 1.5 million people are working as a direct result of the bailout. Ohio’s unemployment rate is well below the national average. G.M.’s American sales continue to increase, and Chrysler said this week that its third-quarter net income rose 80 percent. These companies haven’t just bounced back from the bottom; they are accelerating. What Mr. Romney cannot admit is that all this is a direct result of the government investment he would have rejected. It’s bad enough to be wrong on the policy. It takes an especially dishonest candidate to simply turn up the volume on a lie and keep repeating it. By doing that in a flailing, last-minute grab for Ohio, Mr. Romney is providing a grim preview of what kind of president he would be. |
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holfresh
Posts: 38679 Alba Posts: 0 Joined: 1/14/2006 Member: #1081 |
11/1/2012 8:30 PM
Please also read the article on the previous page..
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holfresh
Posts: 38679 Alba Posts: 0 Joined: 1/14/2006 Member: #1081 |
11/1/2012 8:36 PM
Liberty to Lie
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/liberty-to-lie/?src=me&ref=general This election may go down in history as the moment when truth and lies lost their honor and stigma, respectively. Mitt Romney has demonstrated an uncanny, unflinching willingness to say anything and everything to win this election. And that person, the unprincipled prince of untruths, is running roughly even with or slightly ahead of the president in the national polls. What does this say about our country? What does it say about the value of virtue? The list of Romney’s out-and-out lies (and yes, there is no other more polite word for them) is too long to recount here. So let’s just take one of the most recent ones: the utterly false claim that General Motors and Chrysler shipped, or planned to ship, American auto jobs to China. First, let’s take on the Chrysler claim. On Saturday, The Des Moines Register endorsed Mitt Romney because it thought that he would be “the stronger candidate” to forge “compromises in Congress.” On Tuesday, the news side of that same publication fact-checked Romney’s Chrysler-China claim and found that it was a lie. According to the Register: Mitt Romney first told a crowd in Ohio on Thursday that Chrysler was shifting the production of Jeeps to China. Then he aired an ad claiming that President Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China.” (The clear impression in the ad is that American jobs will be lost.) Neither is true. The paper continued: Jeep sales have nearly tripled since 2009, according to Chrysler, and the company has added 4,600 jobs to its Jeep plants since then. Another 1,100 jobs will be added at an Ohio plant next year. Sales of Jeep in China have grown in recent years and Chrysler plans to resume vehicle production there, but not at the expense of American jobs. GM's facility in north Texas is undergoing an expansion project that is expected to create over a thousand new jobs by the end of November.Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York TimesGM’s facility in north Texas is undergoing an expansion project that is expected to create over a thousand new jobs by the end of November. Now on to GM. The Romney ad claims that “under President Obama, GM cut 15,000 American jobs, but they are planning to double the number of cars built in China, which means 15,000 more jobs for China.” This drew a sharp rebuke from GM: We’ve clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days. No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country. Factcheck.org went into more detail to disprove Romney’s claim: The Romney radio ad also claims — correctly — that GM has cut 15,000 U.S. jobs under Obama. It’s true that 13,000 U.S. hourly employees and 5,000 salaried workers accepted a buyout offer in 2009 to either retire early or voluntarily leave the company, according to GM’s 2009 annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Web site continued: But those numbers don’t tell the whole story. GM eliminated old brands and shuttered dealerships when it went through bankruptcy in 2009 — resulting in fewer jobs. The alternative was to go out of business entirely. And made one further point: The radio ad goes on to falsely claim that the reduction in GM’s U.S. payroll “means 15,000 more jobs for China.” That’s not true. As we wrote once before, GM is expanding operations in China to meet increased demand there for its vehicles. The increase in its China operations is unrelated to its U.S. operations. Romney wouldn’t acknowledge the truth if it kissed him on the cheek. In fact, Romney seems to have decided that the only things standing between him and the White House are stubborn facts. He continues to roll right over them. The question is: will this scurrilous tactic have negative consequences? Unfortunately, there is some evidence that facts and the people who check them don’t carry the same weight that they once did. First, the right’s disinformation machine is, explicitly and implicitly, making the argument that facts (science, math, evidence) are fungible and have been co-opted by liberal eggheads. They have declared war on facts in response to what they claim is a liberal war on faith. This is an utterly false and ridiculous argument, but it works on some people. According to a Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News Swing State poll released Wednesday, President Obama has a 9 percentage point lead over Romney in Ohio among likely voters on the question of who is honest and trustworthy (most people thought that the president was honest while most would not say the same about Romney). But that same poll found that the president only had a 5-point lead in the horse race numbers in Ohio. The president had a similarly large lead on the honesty question in Florida in Virginia, but in those states the poll found the race to be virtually tied — the president had a small lead that was within the margin of error. How is it that so many people are willing to support a man who they don’t believe is honest or trustworthy? The poll also found that most voters didn’t believe that Romney cared about their problems. On the other hand, at least 60 percent of voters in each state said that they believed that the president cared about their problems. Who votes for a man who doesn’t care about you over a man who does? I recognize that Obama hatred is a real thing, but disliking the president so much that you would do harm to yourself by voting for someone who you admit you don’t trust seems to be taking things to extremes. All the voters who are aware of Romney’s fact-mangling but vote for him anyway must ask themselves this question: are they granting him the liberty to lie? |
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holfresh
Posts: 38679 Alba Posts: 0 Joined: 1/14/2006 Member: #1081 |
11/1/2012 8:42 PM
Romney on FEMA, Then and Now
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/romney-on-fema-then-and-now/?ref=politics At a Republican primary debate in June of 2011, CNN’s John King asked Mitt Romney for his views on disaster relief. “FEMA is about to run out of money, and there are some people who say, ‘Do it on a case-by-case basis.’ And there are some people who say, ‘You know what, maybe we’re learning a lesson here that the states should take on more of this role.’ How do you deal with something like that?” Mr. Romney responded ““Absolutely. Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.” He went on to advocate cutting the federal budget, leading Mr. King to interject “Including disaster relief, though?” “We cannot—we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids.” I don’t see how you can read that and not conclude that Primary Mitt endorsed decreasing the federal government’s role in disaster relief with a possible end goal of having private industry take over. Naturally Hurricane Sandy Mitt feels somewhat differently. His campaign released a statement Wednesday that reads: “”I believe that FEMA plays a key role in working with states and localities to prepare for and respond to natural disasters. As president, I will ensure FEMA has the funding it needs to fulfill its mission, while directing maximum resources to the first responders who work tirelessly to help those in need, because states and localities are in the best position to get aid to the individuals and communities affected by natural disasters.” No mention of the private sector; or of how it’s “immoral” to amass debt and thus absolutely necessary to cut the federal budget. Just a bland assurance that FEMA will have “the funding it needs to fulfill its mission.” The reference to “states and localities” may sound like tough federalism, but FEMA already works with local first responders. He did not address whether he would cut other programs to pay for disaster relief (something his running mate, Paul Ryan, has endorsed.) Naturally Mr. Romney didn’t acknowledge that he’d changed his position; he just changed it. As usual there’s no telling which position represents Mr. Romney’s authentic beliefs, or if he has authentic beliefs—or, most crucially, which position a President Romney would hold. |
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Gymkata
Posts: 20677 Alba Posts: 0 Joined: 7/7/2010 Member: #3169 |
11/1/2012 8:47 PM
The auto bailout is an interesting examination of what role government should play in the economy.
According to this Star Trib article, we (the taxpayers) are $1 billion in the hole from the Chrysler bailout, and almost $27 billion down in the GM bailout. Despite the increased sales, shares are trading for less than half what they need to be to recoup the "investment." The question is, should the federal government be in the business of rescuing these businesses, some of which, like GM, were burdened by economic millstones of their own making? And if yes--and we can see that jobs were saved and they are hiring and one state's unemployment rate was spared a hit and those are legit positives--what becomes the threshold for cost acceptability? The state of California, for example, is staring down the barrel of a plus-$500 billion (!) unfunded pension liability. Should that state be bailed out by the feds? What if Wal-Mart was teetering on bankruptcy? Should they be bailed out? "I can not say all the secrets."
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