By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
No word yet if the Moon is in the seventh house or if Jupiter has aligned with Mars but something curious is happening among the monied gentry that form the Republican base. Seems Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is being called out and dissed by the “family.” First, NJ governor Chris Christie, once thought of as a possible Romney running mate for VP, praises Obama for his FEMA support after Hurricane Sandy (and juxtaposed with Romney’s call to end FEMA), and now Chrysler exec. Ralph Gilles calls Romney a liar and full of something rhyming with Mitt.
What prompted Giles’ ire was a tweeted claim by the candidate that, “Obama is a terrible negotiator. He bails out Chrysler and now Chrysler wants to send all Jeep manufacturing to China–and will!” The responding electronic salvo from Gilles was blunt and scatological, “”You are full of sh*t!” Gilles later apologized for his language, but his sentiment was backed up by Chrysler Group LLC Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne who emailed employees that, “I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China.”
Romney had claimed at a speech in swing state Ohio that he read a news article flatly stating that all Jeep production was moving. Jeep has a huge assembly facility in Toledo, so the claim hit like an Arctic blast to a state with 7% unemployment (down from 10.5 % in 2010). Marchionne, who heads both Chrysler and Fiat, seemed to blame Romney’s possible dyslexia saying Jeep production in China would be for the Chinese market, and that the company would not take any production away from Chrysler’s U.S. plants. Rather, he said, Chrysler is adding jobs and investment at its Ohio plant.
No word yet on what Romney read. Maybe the polls in Ohio showing him trailing by 3-4 percentage points.
What makes the two circumstances interesting is the public nature of the family dispute. It’s rare that any Republican strays from Ronald Reagan’s cult like (and faintly un-American) “11th Commandment’ that, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”
Even more rare is upsetting the guy you think might be the next President — unless, that is, you don’t ….
Source: Huffington Post
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Six Romney Supporters Who Undermine His Claims About The Auto Bailout
By Travis Waldron on Oct 30, 2012
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/10/30/1109471/six-romney-supporters-who-contradict-his-claims-about-the-auto-bailout/
Ohio Gov. Refutes Romney: ‘Chrysler Is The One Automaker That Has Increased Employment’
By Travis Waldron on Nov 5, 2012
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/11/05/1138291/ohio-gov-refutes-romney-chrysler-is-the-one-automaker-that-has-increased-employment/
Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) is the latest Republican to refute one of Mitt Romney’s biggest talking points in the state, as he told CBS Monday morning that Chrysler is adding jobs in Ohio, not shipping them to China as Romney has claimed both on the campaign trail and in radio and television ads:
ANCHOR: And is Jeep creating more jobs in Ohio or are they sending them to China?
KASICH: No. Chrysler has, has — Chrysler is the one automaker that has increased employment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOy3pJEUFX4&feature=player_embedded
After Romney’s claims led to auto workers calling their employers because they feared for their jobs, Chrysler chief executive Sergio Marchione wrote a letter to the Detroit News refuting Romney. “Jeep assembly lines will remain in operation in the United States and will constitute the backbone of the brand,” Marchione wrote. “It is inaccurate to suggest anything different.” He also noted, as Kasich said, that Chrysler has added American jobs since the auto industry rescue: “With the increase in demand for our vehicles, especially Jeep branded vehicles, we have added more than 11,200 U.S. jobs since 2009.”
While some Republicans continue to defend Romney, at least six others have repeatedly contradicted his claims about the auto bailout that saved Chrysler and General Motors.
The Chinese government requires that vehicles sold in China must be built in China. If Jeep does not build a plant there, they cannot sell Jeeps in China. However, every time they sell a Jeep in China, the profit comes back to the USA. Jeeps are built in the US and will remain here for the foreseeable future. When you buy a motor vehicle, you can find out its pedigree and where it was built. I doubt seriously any Chinese built Chrysler products will make their way to US shores. If it does, it will have a “Built in China” label and you will be free to not buy that product.
Chrysler will not sell any cars in China unless they are built there. Chrysler wants a share of the biggest market in the world, expand their name brand worldwide, and to do so they have to build plants where the market is.
Mitt Romney does not have the scruples that GM and Chrysler apparently have. By his track record, he will outsource in a New York minute.
So let’s get this straight…it’s ok for Chrysler to make a car in China it COULD make here in the US? You all seem to be in agreement that this is ok, because they will be selling those cars in China? Yes?
Good. Isn’t that called OFFSHORING? The jeeps could be built here and exported over there, yes?
But it’s cheaper to build them over there? Ok. But what if it’s cheaper to build them over there AND cheaper to send them back here?
Not that I am against this, but it smells hypocritcal of all you to blast Romney for outsourcing and offshoring, yet sprint to Obama’s defense when our tax money is going to support a company that…gulp…offshores!!!
The next time you complain about the obvious partisan bias of this media or that person, repeat this line…”pot meet kettle” because you all need to calm down and wipe the foaming saliva from your collective (your favorite word) chins.
“Not that I am against this, but it smells hypocritcal of all you to blast Romney for outsourcing and offshoring, yet sprint to Obama’s defense when our tax money is going to support a company that…gulp…offshores!!!”
Me,
You exhibit all of Romney’s lack of business knowledge understanding and are proud of it to boot. Let me make this clear to you again. There is a world wide market for automobiles. The major players in that market have learned through experience that it is cheaper to build cars in a country, to sell in that country and that is what they are ALL doing now. That’s why you now have Toyota. Honda, Audi, Mercedes Benz, etc. being built in plants in America, by American workers. The Chinese will only allow cars to be built in China, to be sold in China, I would explain the why of it to you, but judging by your comments it would go over your head.
The other point is that Romney is not a businessman, he is a financier. His history is to buy companies by leveraging his investment, paying a small amount and financing the rest, which he the adds his debt to the company books and immediately downsizes the company by either firing the employees or shipping the jobs overseas. He has taken solid companies like Kay Bee Toys and destroyed them while making great profits for himself. He has created nothing except money for himself, thousands out of work and the destruction of viable businesses. That’s not a businessman, that’s a con man. Incidentally, that’s the same trick organized crime has used with businesses for years. The difference is Mitt doesn’t “torch the business” he takes it into bankruptcy. ow you can go ahead and vote for a man like that, but then that would make you either a jerk, or just like him.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2012/11/01/memo-to-mitt-romney-building-jeeps-in-china-is-good-for-america/
“Now, Chrysler, which is lucky enough to own one of the most iconic brands in the world — Jeep — wants to establish local production in China, too. For Jeep, it’s really a second tour of duty. Beijing Jeep was a pioneer in China, assembling vehicles there from 1985 to 2009.
Selling more Jeeps in China will help bolster the Jeep brand globally, making its parent stronger, which can only help secure jobs at the Jeep factories in Detroit, Toledo, Ohio, and Belvidere, Ill. Isn’t that what we want?”
Romney’s Latest Lie, His Former Lies, and Why We Must Not Put Liars in the White House
By Robert Reich
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
http://robertreich.org/post/34650220450
Over the weekend, Romney debuted an ad in Ohio showing cars being crushed as a narrator says Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job.”
In fact, Chrysler is retaining and expanding its Jeep production in North America, including in Ohio. Its profits have enabled it to separately consider expanding into China, the world’s largest auto market.
Responding to the ad, Chrysler emphasized in a blog post that it has “no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China.”
“They are inviting a false inference,” says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on political advertising.
This is only the most recent in a stream of lies from Romney. Remember his contention that the President planned to “rob” Medicare of $716 billion when in fact the money would come from reduced payments to providers who were overcharging — thereby extending the life of Medicare? (Ryan’s plan includes the same $716 billion of savings but gets it from turning Medicare into a voucher and shifting rising health-care costs on to seniors.)
Remember Romney’s claim that Obama removed the work requirement from the welfare law, when in fact Obama merely allowed governors to fashion harder or broader work requirements?
Recall Romney’s assertion that he is not planning to give the rich a tax cut of almost $5 trillion, when in fact that’s exactly what his budget plan does? Or that his budget will reduce the long-term budget deficit, when in fact his numbers don’t add up?
And so on. “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” says Neil Newhouse, a Romney pollster. It is not even being dictated by facts.
There are two lessons here. First, lies financed by deep pockets are hard to refute, but they must be refuted. Otherwise, there is no accountability in our democracy. So far, the American media have not adequately refuted Romney’s lies. They seem to believe that dissembling is permissible, or that pointing out this extraordinary lying machine is itself an act of partisanship.
Second, anyone who tells or countenances such lies cannot be trusted to hold the highest office in our land, because he has no compunctions about feeding false information to the public. In recent memory we’ve had a president who told us there were “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, when in fact there were none. We dare not risk another George W. Bush.
Romneyism
By Robert Reich
Saturday, November 3, 2012
http://robertreich.org/post/34910261055
Excerpt:
By now, in these last remaining days before the election of 2012, we have learned enough about the beliefs of the Republican presidential candidate to see them as a worldview all its own – a kind of creed that explains Mitt Romney. Those who say he has no principles are selling him short.
Despite its contradictions and ellipses, Romneyism has an internal coherence. It is different from conservatism, because it does not intend to conserve or protect any particular institutions or values. It is also distinct from Republicanism, in that it is not rooted in traditional small-town American values, nationalism, or states’ rights.
The ten guiding principles of Romneyism are:
1. Corporations are the basic units of society. Corporations are people, and the overriding purpose of an economy is to maximize corporate profits. When profits are maximized, the economy grows fastest. This growth benefits everyone in the form greater output, better products and services, and higher share prices.
2. Workers are a means to the goal of maximizing corporate profits. If workers do not contribute to that goal, they should be fired. If they cannot then find other work that helps maximize profits in another company, their wages must be too high, and they must therefore accept steadily lower wages until they find a job.
3. All factors of production – capital, physical plant and equipment, workers – are fungible and should be treated the same. Any that fail to deliver high competitive returns should be replaced or discarded. This keeps an economy efficient. Fairness is and should be irrelevant.
4. Pollution, unsafe products, unsafe working conditions, financial fraud, and other negative side effects of the pursuit of profits are the price society pays for profit-driven growth. They should not be used as excuses to constrain the pursuit of profits through regulation.
5. Individual worth depends on net worth — how much money one has made, and the value of the assets that money has been invested in. Any person with enough intelligence and ambition can make a fortune. Failure to do so is sign of moral and intellectual inferiority.
6. People who fail in the economy should not be coddled. They should not receive food stamps, Medicaid, or any other form of social subsidy. Coddling leads to a weaker society and a weaker economy.
7. Taxes are inherently bad because they constrain profit-making. It is the right and responsibility of individuals and corporations to exploit every tax loophole they (and their tax attorneys) can find in order to pay the lowest taxes possible.
Have the Dems done a total on how many jobs that Romney has destroyed via his owning and being CEO of Bain Capital?
USD 950,000 ib advísory fees, approved by its temporary owner, Bain Capital, approves its own bill. Now that is doing business the fraudulent way, the Romney way.
How is your own personal planet doing sir? You know the Mormon way.
And can we find out how much of Bain profit has been funneled to Romney accounts overseas (ex Cayman Island banks.) Don’t hold your breath.
If lies won’t win, then dirty tricks should help a lot.
Thanks for the link.
GM Helped Bain Capital Profit By Giving Funding To Struggling Parts Supplier Owned By Investment Firm
By Zach Carter & jason Cherkis
Posted: 11/03/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/03/gm-bailed-out-bain-capital-romney-profits_n_2069034.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
Excerpt:
In 2000, a financially struggling plastics company that supplied car parts received emergency funding from auto manufacturers General Motors and Ford Co. The plastics company was owned by Bain Capital, the firm co-founded by Mitt Romney.
In other words, Romney, who has written against auto industry bailouts, profited via his involvement in Bain from a GM rescue of a car components supplier. Romney has recently come under fire from GM and Chrysler for airing dubious TV and radio spots suggesting the carmakers were shipping jobs to China.
Bain’s management of Cambridge Industries was chronicled in a June story in The New York Times, which noted that Bain reaped over $10 million from the plastic manufacturer even as it went through bankruptcy, wiping out some of the other investors. According to a 2008 Detroit Free Press story, which is only available for purchase, Cambridge’s bankruptcy meant more than 1,000 workers lost their jobs.
The full saga of Cambridge includes a political twist that The Times omitted: GM’s decision to provide funding to its supplier as Bain managers let the company swing. According articles in the Detroit Free Press and Plastics News from 2000 accessed via Lexis Nexis, both GM and Ford gave unspecified financial aid to Cambridge. As GM and Ford supplied capital, Bain was extracting $950,000 a year in “advisory fees” from the ailing plastics company, according to The Times.
Romney claimed that he was on a paid leave from Bain in 2000 while he was running the Salt Lake City Olympics, but multiple government and company documents suggest otherwise. He held and continues to hold a financial stake in the firm.
Romney burned by own lie to Ohioans
As Ohio guy I resent the fact that Obama is sending the jeep factory to China. How does one get a factory to China? Do the jobs go there like the article says and if so how do the workers get passports? And if this roma guy gets to be President will he tell the truth about important things like how he is going to pave my driveway for such a large sum of money like the last time I talked to him? Roma, Romani, Romanich, Romney. Gipsie Rose Lee.
Gipsie Mitt Willard. How can be be full of such a thing?
Did you notice that activity died here yesterday evening? Either that or the blog is not delivering to me anymore, and that paranoia I will not entertain.
So perhaps one answer is that all were at some pre-
catastrophe party. Wonder how those went and why they were held?
Once upon a time the one percent were scared of the masses, be it post 1917 or earlier. They feared that “we” would take over their system by the force of our mass. And they have spent an effort over the years to assure that this has became an impossibility due to several factors, among which is the technical compatence necessary to run them.
Seems to me that there is one obvious solution to that.
Seizure of the activities, and erection of gallows outside each building of which frequent use is necessary until recalcitrant managers join the cause.
Sound like sedition? Naw, I am just discussing purely theoretically a hypothetical result of being sold down the river by the one percent. As in all hypothetical worlds there are many alternatives to be discussed, and none may be ruled out arbitrarily. Not even the illegal ones. Laws are temporary agreements only. Next week sedition may be re-classified as patriotism.
Not likely but possible in a hypothetical world.
Besides US laws don’t apply to me as I am subject to Swedish law and its sovereignity. I almost wrote “insanity”. C’est egale!
The election has had a good effect. It has helped outline our society in clear light, awaken us from our decades long slumber (some like MikeS have been awake the whole time), and shows where the precipice edge lies and the grand finale of us entering the dark ages again.
Good morning to all.
We cannot, at this point in our ever more corrupt government, afford to have any leaders who identify and vote their real beliefs, if they even have them. We cannot put anyone up there who will do anything even vaguely conscientious. Why? Because everyone up there is held up and supported by ONLY the big corporate money. Even if he GAINS his position by other means, he is supported only by the big corporate money. And each and every one of them knows it. And it will not change. All we can do is to try to prevent the worst of the worst from getting ahead too damn fast. For the rest of it, I think Sandy has basically told us that the earth will start protecting itself. One big shrug and it won’t be Atlas’s.
Pete9999,
I thought that all a55holes were unitary, without sides. But OK, makes a darn fine joke—as usual!
Metro Cowboy,
Don’t do an ElaineM on me. If you need to, start again with Swarthmore Mom’s comment and reflect. That should do it. And it did not originate with me.
I never claim originality.
PS One can also write Lxyzpqr also if one wishes. 😉
Streetwise2011
1, November 3, 2012 at 10:39 am
Mitt Romney speaks out of both sides of his mouth.
========================================================
wrong hole, street.
Elaine, The Jeep ads are horseshit.
MikeS, I try to keep it more positive because more than my disdain for the Red Cross is my love for the the Salvation Army. Dedicated people who won my heart forever working a summer in the Susquehana Valley after Hurricane Agnes. Slowly but surely I think people coming to see the huge difference. I watched a bit of the HBO Sandy telethon last night. The Red Cross did what they do so well, have media and corporations make them the place to send money..JUST Money.
The Red Cross is a fat bowl into one may give money so that fatsos can steal from the bowl and give a pittance to the needy.