Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

News

CNN fact-checks latest pro-Obama ad: it’s full of lies

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Radical leftist Wolf Blitzer fact checking a pro-Obama ad?

Let’s see:

Bridget posted this blurb which summarizes the situation for those who can’t see the video above:

The ad centers around the story of Joe and Ranae Soptic of Kansas City, Missouri. Joe lost his job when GST Steel went under in 2001, after 8 years of Bain Capital attempting to save the dying steel plant. Romney’s site addresses the claims regarding GST:

In 1993, GS Technologies, a company Bain Capital had invested in, purchased a struggling Kansas City steel plant from Armco. Prior to this investment, Armco announced plans to close the Kansas City plant if a buyer could not be found.

This investment – and $170 million in upgrades – kept the Kansas City plant competitive in a tough international market and saved the steel workers’ jobs for eight years.

In addition, the plant finally went under 2 years after Romney left Bain Capital to head up the Salt Lake City Olympics. Even if you believe the Obama campaign’s fact-checked and disproven claim that Romney left Bain in 2002, it would be obscene to blame Romney and Bain when the investment was designed to save GST Steel.

Now, the kicker that makes this the most offensive ad I have seen in a long time (although not in history, as a 2010 ad compared one GOP candidate to the Taliban). Soptic’s wife died in 2006, five years after he lost his job and health insurance with GST’s closing. When she went in for pneumonia, her cancer was so far evolved that it was untreatable, making health care irrelevent. The argument is basically that “some guy, who once worked for a company managed by the company Romney managed, lost his wife to cancer, so Mitt Romney killed her.” This is ridiculous. President Obama should immediately disown this ad, but I doubt that’s going to happen.

I’m actually surprised at CNN. I consider them less objective than Doonesbury cartoons. I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Obama campaign denies knowledge… yet they knew about it in May!

Although the Obama campaign is denying any knowledge of this story, Yahoo News says that the Obama campaign actually knew it was a fraud back in May.

Excerpt:

As Politico first reported, Soptic told essentially the same story in a May 14, 2012, conference call hosted by the Obama campaign. Here’s what he said then, according to a partial recording of the call passed along by a Republican official:

After we lost our jobs, we found out that we were going to lose our health insurance, and that our pensions hadn’t been funded like Bain promised they would be. I was lucky to find another job as a custodian in a local school district. They gave me some health insurance, but I couldn’t afford to buy it for my wife. A little while later she was diagnosed with lung cancer. I had to put her in a county hospital because she didn’t have health care, and when the cancer took her away, all I got was an enormous bill. That put a lot of stress on me: I thought I’d be paying it off until I died myself. That probably wouldn’t have happened if Bain kept its promise and I was allowed to keep our health insurance.

“It’s upsetting what Mitt Romney and his partners did to us,” he added.

The revelation drew an immediate rebuke from Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams, who said Obama and his campaign “are willing to say and do anything to hide the president’s disappointing record.”

“But they’re not entitled to repeatedly mislead voters,” he said.

The Obama campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Even if Obama disowned the ad, it’s not going to make a difference to his rank and file – they get most of their news from the Comedy Channel anyway.

News

Outsourcing billions of taxpayer dollars through stimulus spending

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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

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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.