Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

News

Outsourcing billions of taxpayer dollars through stimulus spending

Leave a comment

A lot of talk about outsourcing in the news these days. CNS News explains who has the real record of outsourcing.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration allowed millions of dollars in federal stimulus funds to go to foreign companies, despite recent statements by President Barack Obama that he opposes “shipping jobs overseas.”

[…]Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus spending law–the $787 billion American Recovery and Reivnestment Act–gave millions of federal dollars to foreign companies or funded domestic companies that built factories in foreign countries or bought foreign products.

For example, there is the North Carolina LED manufacturer Cree Inc. Cree was awarded $39 million through a stimulus-funded tax credit program in January 2010. However, half of the company’s employees are in China and the company opened a manufacturing plant in Huizhou City, China in November 2009, according to an article in the industry publication LEDs Magazine.

[…]Another example of stimulus outsourcing is Japanese wind energy firm Eurus Energy, whose U.S. subsidiary, Eurus Energy America, received $91 million in stimulus funds to build a wind farm in Texas, according to a 2010 report from American University. That wind farm reportedly was built with wind turbines manufactured by another Japanese company – Mitsubishi.

“Eurus Energy America, the U.S. subsidiary of a Japanese firm, received $91 million in stimulus money for its Bull Creek wind farm in Texas. The farm consists of 180 Mitsubishi turbines,” the American University report said.

Eurus told American University that the wind farm was actually built by British firm RES Americas and is now being run by EnXco, an American subsidiary of the French energy firm EDF Energies Nouvelles.

[…]Another example of the Obama administration funding foreign companies is a $337 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy’s green energy lending program.

That loan went to California energy firm Sempra Energy for a solar power array in Arizona. However, according to a Feb. 4, 2011  New York Times report, Sempra Energy bought its solar panels from the Chinese firm Suntech.

The project, known as Mesquite Solar 1, reportedly used 800,000 of the Chinese solar panels.

Perhaps the best-known example of Obama administration funding of foreign companies is its $500-million loan guarantee to Finnish automaker Fisker Automotive.  That loan, part of the Energy Department’s electric vehicle lending program, was made to help Fisker establish a U.S. manufacturing presence.

However, the company never established an American factory, choosing instead to shutter its U.S. operations and continue building cars in Finland.

But that’s not all.

Consider this post from Hans Bader, which further assesses Obama’s record on outsourcing.

Excerpt: (links removed)

“79 percent” of all green-jobs funding in Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package went to foreign companies, with the largest payment going to a bankrupt Australian company.  For example, the Obama Administration spent $1.6 billion on Chinese and other foreign wind power. The practical effect of those subsidies was to outsource American jobs.  ABC News reported on the subsidies for Chinese wind turbines contained in the stimulus package:

Despite all the talk of green jobs, the overwhelming majority of stimulus money spent on wind power has gone to foreign companies, according to a new report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University’s School of Communication in Washington, D.C.

Nearly $2 billion . . . has been spent on wind power. . .But the study found that nearly 80 percent of that money has gone to foreign manufacturers of wind turbines.

“Most of the jobs are going overseas,” said Russ Choma at the Investigative Reporting Workshop. He analyzed which foreign firms had accepted the most stimulus money. “According to our estimates, about 6,000 jobs have been created overseas, and maybe a couple hundred have been created in the U.S.” Even with the infusion of so much stimulus money, a recent report by American Wind Energy Association showed a drop in U.S. wind manufacturing jobs last year.

The stimulus package also showered money on left-wing community organizers and liberal lobbying groups.

Earlier, NewsMax reported on a $2 billion subsidized loan by the U.S. government to a Brazilian oil company:

Gulf Oil CEO Joe Petrowski says President Barack Obama’s weekend comments in Brazil that the United States looks forward to purchasing oil drilled for offshore by that nation “is rather puzzling,” and “hypocritical” as his administration has imposed a virtual moratorium on domestic drilling. The signal to purchase more foreign oil comes after the U.S. Export-Import Bank invested more than $2 billion with Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration.

The CEO of General Electric, which has received government “green jobs” money, is a close Obama advisor.  GE has been busy outsourcing American jobs, eliminating a fifth of its U.S. workforce since 2002.  GE made $14.2 billion in profits in 2010, but paid no taxes at all, even though America’s corporate tax rates are among the highest in the world.  Indeed, GE actually received a tax benefit of $3.2 billion from the government in 2010, and received a preferential bailout at taxpayer expense.

That post goes on and on and on and on like that. Obama likes to “spread the wealth around”, remember?

What causes outsourcing? When you have the highest corporate tax rate in the world – that causes outsourcing. When you keep piling on regulations and regulations onto businesses, from Obamacare to Dodd-Frank – that causes outsourcing. When you take money collected from taxes paid by American businesses and hand it out to foreign companies owned by Democrat-allies – that causes outsourcing. When you block energy companies from developing energy here at home – that causes outsourcing.

UPDATE: I put millions in the post title, but it’s actually billions. At least $29 billion.

News

Romney boldly urges NAACP to embrace free enterprise and reject dependence

1 Comment

From Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

Romney knew he’d be booed when he said he’d get rid of ObamaCare, the job- and growth-killing behemoth that is the fruition of the cradle-to-grave nanny state on which many people have become increasingly dependent. He knew his accurate description of minority joblessness in this third recovery summer wouldn’t bring applause. He told the truth anyway, even if it didn’t get him one more black vote, and even if the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People attendees, for whom advancement has been replaced by dependence, couldn’t handle the truth.

“In June,” said Romney, “the overall unemployment rate remained stuck at 8.2%” — but the rate for blacks “actually went up, from 13.6% to 14.4%.”

He noted that black students account for 17% of students nationwide, with 42% of those trapped in failing schools. He spoke of “neighborhoods filled with violence and fear (and) empty of opportunity.”

And on a matter that separates most black church leaders from Obama, he pledged to defend traditional marriage as the president embraces the gay version.

Romney’s speech didn’t pander to anybody.

Nor was it demeaning or insensitive to his audience. He merely pointed out that Obama’s philosophy of dependence on government was not the answer to their need for jobs, education and stable communities.

“The president will say he will do those things, but he will not, he cannot, and his record of the last four years proves it,” Romney told the dubious crowd, adding: “If you want a president who will make things better in the African American community, you’re looking at him.”

Here’s an excerpt from the full text:

Finally, I will address the institutionalized inequality in our education system. And I know something about this from my time as governor.

In the years before I took office our state’s leaders had come together to pass bipartisan measures that were making a difference. In reading and in math, our students were already among the best in the nation — and during my term, they took over the top spot.

Those results revealed what good teachers can do if the system will only let them. The problem was, this success wasn’t shared. A significant achievement gap between students of different races remained. So we set out to close it.

I urged faster interventions in failing schools, and the funding to go along with it. I promoted math and science excellence in schools, and proposed paying bonuses to our best teachers.

I refused to weaken testing standards, and instead raised them. To graduate from high school, students had to pass an exam in math and English — I added a science requirement as well. And I put in place a merit scholarship for those students who excelled: the top 25 percent of students in each high school were awarded a John and Abigail Adams Scholarship — which meant four years tuition-free at any Massachusetts public institution of higher learning.

When I was governor, not only did test scores improve — we also narrowed the achievement gap.

The teachers unions were not happy with a number of these reforms. They especially did not like our emphasis on choice through charter schools, particularly for our inner city kids. Accordingly, the legislature passed a moratorium on any new charter schools.

As you know, in Boston, in Harlem, in Los Angeles, and all across the country, charter schools are giving children a chance, children that otherwise could be locked in failing schools. I was inspired just a few weeks ago by the students in one of Kenny Gamble’s charter schools in Philadelphia. Right here in Houston is another success story: the Knowledge Is Power Program, which has set the standard, thanks to the groundbreaking work of the late Harriet Ball.

These charter schools are doing a lot more than closing the achievement gap. They are bringing hope and opportunity to places where for years there has been none.

Charter schools are so successful that almost every politician can find something good to say about them. But, as we saw in Massachusetts, true reform requires more than talk. As Governor, I vetoed the bill blocking charter schools. But our legislature was 87 percent Democrat, and my veto could have been easily over-ridden. So I joined with the Black Legislative Caucus, and their votes helped preserve my veto, which meant that new charter schools, including some in urban neighborhoods, would be opened.

When it comes to education reform, candidates cannot have it both ways — talking up education reform, while indulging the same groups that are blocking reform. You can be the voice of disadvantaged public-school students, or you can be the protector of special interests like the teachers unions, but you can’t be both. I have made my choice: As president, I will be a champion of real education reform in America, and I won’t let any special interest get in the way.

I think he is right to emphasize the marriage issue, because 1300 black pastors recently expressed grave misgivings about Obama due to his support for gay marriage.

News

Governor Bobby Jindal signs bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks

2 Comments
Bobby and Supriya Jindal
Republican Governor Bobby Jindal

Weekly Citizen reports:

Governor Bobby Jindal signed two new laws.  The legislation – SB 766 by Senator John Alario and HB 1086 by Representative Alan Seabaugh – are part of the Governor’s 2012 legislative package.

SB 766 by Senator John Alario prohibits abortions of an unborn child who is 20 weeks or older, and provides for license revocation and disciplinary action for any person who intentionally or knowingly performs or induces an abortion on a woman when she has a baby who is 20 weeks or older.

HB 1086 by Representative Alan Seabaugh prohibits euthanasia for the non-terminally ill and the severely disabled.  Prior to Governor Jindal signing this new law those same protections were only offered for the terminally ill.

Governor Jindal said, “It is incumbent upon us to protect the weakest and most vulnerable among us, and these new laws will protect innocent human life.”

Earlier this year, Governor Jindal signed SB 330 by Senator Rick Ward to create a specific crime for performing an abortion in Louisiana if the abortionist is not licensed to practice medicine in Louisiana. The legislation also created the crime of aggravated criminal abortion by dismemberment when the unborn child is dismembered in the course of a criminal abortion.

Governor Jindal also signed SB 708 by Senator Sharon Weston Broome to require that the fetal heartbeat be made audible and ultrasound images be displayed for optional review prior to an abortion.

Here’s the breakdown of possible running mates for the Republican nominee.

Jindal is in first place:

1a. Gov. Bobby Jindal, LA — No single person better combines the ability to excite the Republican “base” with the breadth of resumé experience, the reformist record, and the proven ability ofcrisis management than does Jindal. At age 25 he rescued Louisiana’s state health-care system from Medicaid-induced collapse; he helped forge a national Medicare solution (along Paul Ryan’s later lines) that won over Democratic moderates like John Breaux and Bob Kerrey but fell short when Bill Clinton pulled the plug during the Lewinsky mess; he ran Louisiana’s second-largest system of colleges; he served as the number two guy at the federal Department of Health and Human Services; he served three years in Congress and emerged from Hurricane Katrina as the only Louisiana politician with his stature enhanced by his highly effective responses; and he has been the most successful conservative reformer (and the only re-elected one) ever to serve as Louisiana’s governor. As governor he pushed through some needed ethics reformed, pared state government, kept taxes low, handled the BP oil spill superbly, and pushed through (partly in his first term, partly in his second) a series of education reforms (expanding choice and improving accountability) that, combined, probably outstrip even those of Florida’s Jeb Bush and Wisconsin’s Tommy Thompson as the boldest and best school improvements in modern American history.

Some will gripe that Jindal adds no geographical advantage to the ticket — and they are right. But that consideration pales in comparison with what he will add in one particular area. It is almost certain that, regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on Obamacare, the question of “what would Republicans do to replace it” will dominate campaign coverage throughout the summer and perhaps all the way until Election Day. Romney himself, as the author of Romneycare and a once-avid advocate of an individual insurance mandate, is poorly equipped to handle this question. No high-ranking elected official in the country, however, can match Jindal for his expert knowledge on health-care policy, nor can anybody else match Jindal’s ability to explain positive, conservative alternatives to the Left’s state-controlled systems. In short, he takes a major Romney weakness and turns it into a strength, on an issue that really could sway the whole election.

Jindal also will be hard to attack. He has been somewhat inoculated by none other than James Carville, who said (for the dust-jacket of Jindal’s excellent book) that “I don’t agree with the guy on everything, but Governor Jindal has provided competent, honest, and personable leadership throughout some of Louisiana’s toughest times.”

Alas, nobody is perfect, and while national conservatives love Jindal, numerous Louisiana conservatives (some of them quite perspicacious, not to mention friends of mine) will bend anybody’s ear about certain alleged shortcomings and apostasies. Individually, their complaints may have merit. Collectively, they still don’t add up to an effective indictment of somebody who has had more success with conservative governance than anybody in Louisiana history.

Conservatives also will complain that Jindal is sometimes too inaccessible, and that his own geniality masks a serious political ruthlessness in his administration. In truth, there is a certain air of LBJ-like political muscle — definitely minus the corruption, thank goodness — that comes from the administration. On the other hand, in the hardball realm of national politics in which the Left and its media allies have no compunction about smearing conservatives relentlessly, conservatives could probably use a measure of ruthless effectiveness.

If Bobby Jindal and his team are deceptively tough, it also means they are tough to beat. Conservatives and Republicans of all stripes should celebrate such a quality — and Mitt Romney darn well ought to make use of it.

He is tied for first place with former senator John Kyl of Arizona.

I would prefer Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan, Pat Toomey or Bobby Jindal. Go with ice cold competence. These are all people with stong fiscal conservative credentials but who are also thoughtful, reflective social conservatives.