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As Ohio has become almost a must-win state for Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, he has sought to blur distinctions between himself and President Barack Obama on the issue of the 2009 auto bailouts.
A new TV ad playing to erroneous fears that Jeep might move its manufacturing from Ohio to China caps a prolonged effort by Romney to recast his opposition to Obama's actions to prop up an industry that employs one in eight of Ohio's voters.
Romney has sought to reframe his criticism of Obama's handling of the 2009 rescue of General Motors and Chrysler in an effort to combat the president's usage of the bailout to court swing voters in the Buckeye State. The GOP nominee has argued it was Obama who took the companies bankrupt, and has argued that he would be a better president for beleaguered autoworkers.
Mitt Romney campaigns in the critical battleground state of Ohio as a poll shows a dead heat between the governor and President Obama. Watch the entire speech.
And a new television ad airing in Toledo and Youngstown, Ohio, the Romney campaign raises the specter of production of Jeeps moving from the U.S. to China, an assertion which Jeep's Italian parent company has said is blatantly false.
Related: Ohio governor says Romney will carry Buckeye State
The GOP candidate's new tack represents an effort to play offense on the issue of auto bailouts in the final eight days of the campaign. Obama has used Romney's opposition to the 2008-09 rescue to great effect in Ohio and other Midwestern states, where the former Massachusetts governor must perform well if he's to have any hope of being elected president.
"You saw in the debates that Barack Obama said a few things that were, as he said, whoppers," Ohio Sen. Rob Portman said at a Romney rally on Monday in Cleveland. "He turned to Mitt Romney and said, 'You wanted to take those companies through bankruptcy and not provide them any federal aid.' Let me tell you, I supported a rescue package for the autos, but what Barack Obama said was simply not true. And by the way, it was Barack Obama who took GM and Chrysler through bankruptcy."
Ohio Gov. John Kasich tells David Gregory that the job creators deserve the credit for helping raise Ohio's economic growth.
Ohio's Republican governor, John Kasich, also suggested Sunday on "Meet the Press" that the bailout hadn't been as great as Obama might suggest.
"We are thrilled that we have a strong auto industry," he argued, "but it doesn't account for the growth of 112,000 jobs in our state."
But it was the Jeep ad in particular that marked the culmination of an effort by Romney over the past 18 months to reframe the auto debate on friendlier terms.
"Obama took GM and Chrylser into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians, who are going to build Jeeps in China," the narrator of the ad says as a clip of a disputed Bloomberg News report appears onscreen, saying Chrysler "plans to return Jeep output to China."
The original Bloomberg report became fodder for conservatives, including Romney, who said last week in Ohio that Jeep "is thinking of moving all production to China." But Jeep's ownership has said it isn't planning to move any U.S. production to China; rather, the automaker is establishing new capacity in China to build vehicles that will be sold in China.
But the ad plays to those ill-founded fears. A fair viewing of the ad might leave that impression with a voter, though the language in the ad is so narrowly tailored that it can't be directly disputed.
That could make a difference in a battleground territory like northwest Ohio, the home to a major Jeep plant that employs thousands of Toledoans and almost left the area in the late 1990s until the city stepped forward to offer hundreds of millions in tax credits.
The Obama campaign responded with a TV ad of its own, accusing the GOP nominee of being "wrong then" and "dishonest now."
"It reeks of desperation, because that's what it is," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said Monday on a conference call.
But the Jeep ad is just one component of Romney's months-long effort to better couch his opposition to the bailout.
FIRST READ: Romney's chances in Ohio tied to softening bailout stance
Romney, whose father was an auto executive before becoming governor of Michigan, penned an op-ed shortly after the 2008 election, infamously titled, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." The piece for the New York Times opposed the loans for the companies that then-outgoing President George W. Bush and some Republicans (including Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman who would become Romney's vice presidential nominee) had favored, calling instead for a managed bankruptcy for GM and Chrysler with government support for the companies' warranties and for post-bankruptcy financing offered by private lenders.
Obama eventually embarked upon a different course. His administration negotiated a managed bankruptcy with bondholders, autoworkers' unions and the companies' leadership, while occasionally injecting the companies with capital drawn from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in order to stave off a more drastic bankruptcy, and possible liquidation.
Democrats contend that no private financing was available to the auto companies during the bailout, and the government was the only actor equipped to provide the companies with a lifeline while simultaneously negotiating their bankruptcy, from which GM and Chrysler immediately emerged.
The Daily Rundown's Chuck Todd reports with the latest.
The bailout was unpopular at the time, derided by Republicans as a favor for unions, since autoworkers' pensions — in conservatives' view — were favored over dealers and other secured bondholders. Indeed, the Indiana State Police Pension Fund sued to prevent the deal from going forward, but it was rejected by the Supreme Court.
RELATED: Auto politics haunt Romney in NW Ohio
GM and Chrysler both rebounded in the months following the bailout to improve sales and profits, allowing the companies to pay off their loans from the government more quickly than expected. Their success has been heralded ever since by Democrats as a gutsy and successful example of Obama's leadership at the height of the Great Recession.
And since that time, Romney has — at alternating moments — both embraced and rejected central elements of Obama's decision making.
The Republican nominee has argued that it was his original idea, rather than Obama's, to put the auto companies through bankruptcy, though Romney's proposed process would have differed immensely. (Romney's plan wouldn't have necessarily forced GM and Chrysler into liquidation, nor was that what the governor had advocated — contrary to the president's suggestion during this month's debate.)
Romney was most pointedly forced to confront his opposition to the bailout during the Michigan and Ohio primaries in late February and early March. The Michigan native repeatedly called himself a "car guy" while campaigning near the Motor City, and appeared driving a Chrysler in a TV ad.
And Romney took to the editorial page of the Detroit News, where he accused Obama of "crony capitalism" in the bailout and said the companies would have been better off without Obama's intervention.
"Instead of doing the right thing and standing up to union bosses, Obama rewarded them," Romney wrote.
FLASHBACK: How much support would Romney have given to automakers?
As with a number of other issues since the primary, Romney, the Republican standard-bearer, has tried to soften the edges of some of his harder-charging rhetoric during the primaries.
"I’m a son of Detroit. I was born in Detroit. My dad was head of a car company. I like American cars. And I would do nothing to hurt the U.S. auto industry. My plan to get the industry on its feet when it was in real trouble was not to start writing checks," Romney said at the third and final debate a week ago against Obama.
The GOP nominee's claim prompted the president to accuse Romney of trying to "airbrush history."
Speaking Monday in Youngstown, Ohio, former President Bill Clinton got in on the action. He said Chrysler "put out a statement sayin' it was the biggest load of bull in the world" in reference of the Jeep-to-China rumors.
"He ties himself in more knots than a Boy Scout does in a knot-tying contest," Clinton said of Romney.
Reuters, Getty Images
In the final push in the 2012 presidential election, candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama make their last appeals to voters.
Leave a Comment:
according to harry reid........."word on the street is this ad is true"........chrysler was sold to fiat. and that's build and owned in italy. obama should produce the bailout papers andprove that it's wrong.
But the ad isn't true. The ad doesn't say Italy, it says China.
Also, it is a RUMOR that Fiat is CONSIDERING moving some production to Italy. It is not a fact.
Mitt might actually have won some points by telling the truth.
But in the end, he lied. Period.
From a Bloomberg article on 10/22/12: Fiat SpA (F), majority owner of Chrysler Group LLC, plans to return Jeep output to China and may eventually make all of its models in that country, according to the head of both automakers’ operations in the region. Romney is telling the truth.
They don't have any production capacity in China, which is why they want to build a factory there: So they can sell Jeeps to the Chinese market.
So how can they "plan to reutrn Jeep output to China" when they've never been built there in the first place?
Updated as of 9:00pm EST on Monday, October 29:
Real Clear Politics (RCP) is consistently cited by both FOXNEWS and NBCNEWS as a current source for
reliable averaged polling data at every level of American politics.
RCP on Thursday returned North Carolina (NC) to the status of "toss-up state," and in so doing, reduced Romney's likely electoral vote tally from 206 to 191. However, Romney still holds an appreciable albeit softening lead of 3.0% in NC and remains the favorite to capture that state in the upcoming election.
In sum, RCP now considers the following eleven states, listed in descending order of electoral votes, as "toss-up": Florida (FL), Pennsylvania (PA), Ohio (OH), Michigan (MI), North Carolina (NC),Virginia (VA), Colorado (CO), Wisconsin (WI), Iowa IO), Nevada (NV) and New Hampshire (NH).
With only 171 hours left in the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama leads in seven of the toss-ups, Romney leads in two, and in CO and VA as of Saturday the candidates are now tied.
In descending order of 'percentage of lead' in favor of Obama, followed in ascending order of 'percentage of lead' in favor of Romney, here are the published averaged numbers from RCP as of 9:00pm EST today together with the FiveThirtyEight election night probability of victory for either candidate:
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In PA, with 20 electoral votes, Obama's lead is holding at 4.7%.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Obama a 94.2% chance of winning PA.
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In MI, with 16 electoral votes, Obama's lead is holding at 4.0%.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Obama a 98.1% chance of winning MI.
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In NV, with 6 electoral votes, Obama's lead is holding at 2.4%.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Obama an 79.7% chance of winning NV.
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In WI, with 10 electoral votes, Obama's lead is holding at 2.3%.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Obama an 85.7% chance of winning WI.
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In IO, with 6 electoral votes, Obama's lead is holding at 2.3%.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Obama a 70.9% chance of winning IO.
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In NH, with 4 electoral votes, Obama's lead is holding at 2.0%.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Obama a 70.3% chance of winning NH.
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In OH, with 18 electoral votes, Obama's lead is holding at 1.9%.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Obama a 73.3% chance of winning OH.
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In VA, with 13 electoral votes, the race remains tied.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Obama a 57.8% chance of winning VA.
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In CO, with 9 electoral votes, the race remains tied.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Obama a 55.4% chance of winning CO.
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In FL, with 29 electoral votes, Romney's lead is holding at 1.4%.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Romney a 64.7% chance of winning FL.
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In NC, with 15 electoral votes, Romney's lead is holding at 3.0%.
FiveThirtyEight gives Romney an 81.4% chance of winning NC.
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So…
For Obama to win re-election, the easiest route still appears to be through maintaining his current lead in the four toss-up states in which his existing margins are widest, PA, MI, NV, and WI, together with OH where his lead has been hovering at a vulnerable 2.0% for the past few days. Doing so would bring his electoral vote total on Election Day to 271. In this scenario, Obama could still surpass 270 while failing to hold either IO or NH.
However, should Obama fail to hold OH, the loss could effectively be neutralized by any of the following combination of wins from states where FiveThirtyEight is currently predicting Obama victories:
Path #1: Obama loses OH but wins IO, NH, and CO resulting in 272 electoral votes.
Path #2: Obama loses OH but wins IO and VA resulting in 272 electoral votes.
Path #3: Obama loses OH but wins CO and VA resulting in 275 electoral votes.
However, regarding Path #1, there is some question as to the accuracy of the RCP polling numbers in NH which still include in their average a recent 'outlier' finding from UNH which had Obama leading by a questionable 9.0%.
For Romney to unseat Obama, he not only would have to hold the two states in which he presently leads, FL and NC, bringing his electoral vote total to 235, but also steal victories in CO where his lead fell from 0.4% on Friday to that of dead heat, in VA where his lead fell from 1.0% Saturday to another dead heat, and finally with OH where Obama's lead fell this morning to 1.9%. By so doing, Romney's electoral vote total would reach 275.
Should Romney take CO and VA but fail to take OH, he could overcome this shortfall by stealing WI and either IO or NH, resulting respectively in an electoral vote total of 273 or 271.
With only 171 hours of campaigning left, this one may come down to the wire….and to the October jobs report which because of Hurricane Sandy may be delayed from a scheduled Friday release to the following Monday, one day before the election.
Let's hope that Election Day is free of both voter fraud and voter intimidation and that eligible voters who have registered in good faith over the past six months are in fact able to vote on November 6; let's also hope that vote tabulation itself is performed honestly and accurately by both the election commissions and private corporations to whom this essential role is being entrusted.
In any case, it will be interesting to watch as election night unfolds.
Uncommitt Mitt will say anything to attempt to turn around his "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" comment. Jeep has basically call Romney a LIAR in response to his latest ad. Romney talk out both sides of his mouth. I work with a group of people for his former state of MA. and they ALL did not like him. Says one thing but does another. How anyone with an ounce of brain votes for this guy, I'll never understand!!!!
Hay It's A New Romney Approach!
Normally His Version Of The Truth Is Just A Lie!
Now He's Trying To Make The Truth Fit His Lie!
Creative Aren't We Mr. Romney!
Sorry -- But -- No More Tries ( Lies ) For You!
Welcome To Reality TV -- That Is Really Real Big Guy!
Not A Romney Land Production!
Flip, Flop... Flip, Flop... Flip, Flop
Mitt behaves like a fish out of water...
i just hope you Americans aren't as stupid as the rest of the world thinks you are. If you cant see through Romney's blatant lies and flip flopping, there really is no hope for America.
U.S.A - United States of Amnesia
Does anyone else notice that the GOP faithful don't really mind lying? They not only don't mind that their candidate lies, but they don't mind doing it themselves...
When they are caught (just like many posts here) they frantically change the subject, trying to get somebody (anybody) to bite on anything else...
Seriously... It is almost as if they all had the same training class, because they have VERY similar tactics.... If they are caught lying about jeeps, they shift to Libya. When caught lying on that, they are off to something else on their list... It seems you know they are exhausted only when they get o the "He was born in Kenya" and "He is a Muslim" lies...
It is really weird... Don't let them run away and change the subject!!!
Romney is caught in this Bold Faced LIE!!!
Jesus doesn't like liars Willard Romney. Even the ownership of Chrysler denies it, yet the GOP runs their misleading ad anyway. What lying trash.
This forthcoming Presidential election is a referendum on character. Over the past 2 months, we have seen and heard Romney say anything to anyone to get a vote. Even hard core Republicans know that Romney has been spinning tales to get the vote. Is this the kind of person that you want as President of ther U.S.?
The people that are voting for Mitt Romney just don't care. His own party knows he his a flip flopper. They only care about getting President Obama out of office. They couldn't care less about the consequences of putting a person in without any integrity.
Their pure, utter hatred has blinded them to anything else but getting rid of Obama.
Romney releases a big lie every Monday like clockwork. He will have his last next Monday, unless he has a surplus, lies as the grand finale, and goes off every day.
There is a reason Gingrich called him a liar on Fox News during the primaries. Lies won Romney the nomination and made him a soul mate to Republicans commenting here.
Political parties are dangerous to thinking for yourself - both of them. However, Republican is more of a syndicate than a party.
Is there no limit to what Romney will say to get elected...even absolute LIES!!! Mitt the Twit and Lyin'Ryan can not be believed. They MUST be stopped on election days. This commercial is the nothing but completely inaccurate!!! I used to like and respect Romney, now I can stand him!!! If Romney is the best the Republicans have to offer, the Republicans have NOTHING to offer!!!
I have been reading the posts on this page,, I cannot believe that Republicians are so naive that they cannot call a spade a spade. I don't live in the US but I listened to every debate, the US is your country, please start paying attention and get involved in what goes on. Romney did say let the auto industry go through just like he said that illegal immigrants should take self deportation, he don't care, what about the children who went to the US as babies and don't know anyone back in their parents original country. When you listen to all Romney's debates and the last one with the President one realised that he had a turn of the tongue. He was trying to go soft to say he said this and he said that but it was all lies Hope you Americians realise if Romney becomes your President, as my grandmother used to say 'dog eat your suppe' If after the President save the auto industry and they give Romney the vote to win Ohio, it willbe a sad night. As Colin Powell said if he gets in the Whitehouse you don't know which Romney you will be getting. Please people go out and vote Obama/Biden, four more years. vehicles,
Building a jeep factory in China is not moving a factory to China, America don't export vehicles they build them for themselves.
When you get to the voting booth remember these Obama promises and lies.
Would have the most transparent administration in History
Didn’t know Jeremiah Wright was Radical
Minimum Wage will increase to $9.50/hr
Obama campaign would accept public funding
No more wiretapping of citizens
Guantanamo bay to be closed within a year
I am not somebody who promotes same-sex marriage.
Unemployment rate will be 8.5% without stimulus.
Health Care deals will be covered on C-span
Cut Deficit in Half by end of first term
Obama says he’ll save average family $8,000 in gas
We shouldn’t Mandate the purchase of health care
The Health Care Package will pay for itself
We have run out of places in the US to drill for oil.
ObamaCare Fee is not a new tax
The health care bill will not increase the deficit by one dime.
Fence between US and Mexico is “Practically Complete”
My budget will cut the deficit by $4 Trillion over 10 years.
Romney and Ryan will gut pell grants for low-income college students.
I don’t Have Lobbyists
I’ll get rid of earmarks
Nice try spewing even more lies and tying to change the subject. It doesnt work any more....
Romney is a filthy liar....
I will take a guy telling me the truth and trying over a knowing liar every single day of my life..
WASHINGTON – Using a Pakistani Internet Protocol and proxy server, a disposable credit card and a fake address, "Osama bin Laden" has successfully donated twice to Barack Obama's presidential re-election campaign.
The "Bin Laden" donations, actually made by WND staff, included a listed occupation of "deceased terror chief" and a stated employer of "al-Qaida."
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Kabbalah.com/Chicago"Bin Laden" is currently set up on the official campaign website to contribute more to Obama's campaign. The name is also registered as a volunteer.
Since the "foreign" contribution was sent, "Bin Laden's" email address has received several solicitations from Obama's campaign asking for more donations.
Incredible 1-day offer: Get Aaron Klein's "Fool Me Twice" for only $4.95! The New York Times bestseller called most important book of election season
The apparently foreign-based contributions were conducted as a test after a flurry of media reports described the ability of foreigners to donate to the Obama campaign but not to Mitt Romney's site, which has placed safeguards against such efforts.
The acceptance of foreign contributions is strictly illegal under U.S. campaign finance law.
One $15 donation was made at BarackObama.com using a confirmed Pakistani IP address. In other words, as far as the campaign website was concerned, the donation was openly identified electronically as coming from Pakistan.
Upon clicking the "donate" button, WND staff selected the $15 amount and were taken to a page on the campaign website asking for a first and last name, city, state, zip code, email address and phone number.
The information submitted was: "Osama bin Laden, 911 Jihad Way, Abbottabad, CA 91101."
While the website only has options for U.S. states and zip codes, there is no mechanism in place on Obama's website to verify the individual is actually located in that state or zip code, or even in the U.S.
The Obama campaign refuses to release the identification of donors who give less than $200
In the case of this donation, the 91101 zip code is real but corresponds to Pasadena, Calif., and not Abbottabad, the Pakistani city in which bin Laden was found holed up in a compound.
For a requested phone number, WND inputted the White House information line of (202) 456-2121.
The email address used to set up the donation account was osama4obama2012@gmail.com.
After clicking "next," the website asked for an employer, occupation and a password to set up future donations. WND staff entered the occupation as "deceased terror chief" and the employer as "al-Qaida."
The transaction was made last Friday with the use of a disposable credit card. The website did not require the card's security code.
"Jeep's ownership has said it isn't planning to move any U.S. production to China; rather, the automaker is establishing new capacity in China to build vehicles that will be sold in China." Another in the long series of open faced Romeny lies! Debunked by the owners of Jeep themselfs!
Now let me see if I have this right, Romney's Bain capital has moved & is currently moving Co's. like Sensata, AMPAD, GST steel and others to China for $ 0.90 p/hr labor.
Yet they double down on a proven lie and say "Obama took GM and Chrylser into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians, who are going to build Jeeps in China,"
This is what I would call the ultimate RepubliCON deflection of what I do I blame on you! & you fools are letting them get away with it by supporting him!
At what point will you folks realize that you are being lied to constantly & on a daily basis by the Romney campaign, yet you are still sucking it in Hook, Line, & Sinker! At what point in time will the lies soak in and you realize you have been screwed again by the Republicans. At what point in time will you say enough is enough and I can't stand it no more and change the minon mentality that is so persuasive in you minds. I will take the current growth that is ongoing as compared to openly and with out disdain being lied to! if he will openly do this to get the office what will happen to the trust once he is elected and does not have to tell you anything under the ruse of Executive Privilege. When you compare the U.S. economy to the world economy we are currently doing quite well in that perspective to the rest of the worlds GDP.
All I can say is you fools are like Chickens voting for Col. Sander's, for the promise of feed for a few days, just to be fattend & have your heads removed! Would you like to be fried as Original or Extra Crispy! However it really does not matter much once your heads are removed.
By Paul Kengor
Frank Marshall Davis
President Barack Obama has confidently told the successful that they wouldn't be where they are without the help of others. "You didn't get there on your own," says the president.
Move up t Move down
Book Review: "The Communist" - Does Frank Marshall Davis Have An Ideological Godson In President Obama?
Mark Hendrickson
Contributor
Well, Obama should know. As a young man in the 1970s, he repeatedly sought the counsel of a Hawaiian man named Frank Marshall Davis, whom he first met in 1970 through his maternal grandfather. Obama's grandfather had sought out Davis as a mentor for his grandson, a black-male role model/father figure that the young Obama was lacking. Obama responded in kind.
"I was intrigued by old Frank," reports Obama in Dreams from My Father, "with his books and whiskey breath and the hint of hard-earned knowledge behind the hooded eyes." Davis offered Obama advice at several life-changing levels: on race, on college, on women, on his mind, on his attitudes, on life, on the very notion of what Davis himself called "fundamental change." In his memoirs, Obama features 22 direct references to "Frank" by name. Davis became a part of Obama's life and mind, by Obama's own extended recounting, from Hawaii—the site of multiple visits and late evenings together—to Los Angeles to Chicago to Germany to Africa, from adolescence to college to community organizing. When Obama arrived in Chicago to find himself professionally and politically—just as Frank Marshall Davis himself had once done in the 1930s—Obama literally visualized Davis, pictured him. He thought first of "Frank."
Unfortunately, Obama left out some salient facts about Frank Marshall Davis. Among them, Davis joined Communist Party USA in Chicago during World War II (his Party number was 47544). He became extremely active in Party circles and even wrote for and was the founding editor-in-chief of the Communist Party publication there, the Chicago Star. He left Chicago in 1948 for Hawaii, where he would write for the Party publication there, the Honolulu Record. Those writings reveal a man fully loyal to the Soviet Union and the Communist Party line, and often bare an uncanny resemblance to Obama's own rhetoric, whether Davis was bashing Wall Street, big oil, big banks, corporate executives and their "excess profits" and "greed" and their "fat contracts," the wealthy and "millionaires," GOP tax cuts that "spare the rich," and on and on.
Particularly interesting, however, and worthy of the attention to readers of this publication, were Frank Marshall Davis's writings incessantly demonizing General Motors.
In the Chicago Star, Davis and his comrades eviscerated GM every chance they had. The Star, for instance, mocked the claims of Winston Churchill—incidentally, Davis, like Obama, did not like Churchill—that an Iron Curtain was being erected by Stalin in Europe; to the contrary, the Star maintained that the only "Iron Curtains" were those being erected by the likes of General Motors. The problem was not Stalin's Iron Curtain, scoffed Frank Marshall Davis in his usual incendiary language, but "G.M.'s iron curtain," being raised by "General Motors' Hitlers." The Chicago Star carried headlines claiming that GM itself was a "branch of U.S. imperialism."
Frank Marshall Davis saw GM as a sinister force, and was unrelenting in his anti-GM crusade for years to come. He was particularly indignant at GM's profits, which he felt were too high. According to Davis, GM, like America as a whole, was good at manufacturing one thing: "we have manufactured a national horror of socialism."
In a January 26, 1950 column, titled, "Free Enterprise or Socialism," Davis framed an America on the verge of another Great Depression, with a "virtual dictatorship of Big Business" being the culprit. Zeroing in on the "tentacles of Big Business," Davis cut loose on GM:
Alfred Sloan of General Motors announced that his gigantic company made a profit last year of $600,000,000, more than any other corporation in history. Over the years, General Motors has swallowed up or knocked out car manufacturer after car manufacturer so that today less than a handful of competitors remains. Free enterprise, eh?
Obviously, a business that can show a profit in one year of $600,000,000 is in a position to control government. When we remember that the directors and major stockholders of one industry also shape the policies of banks and other huge corporations, it is easy to see that the tentacles of Big Business control just about everything they think they need to insure continued profits…. For many years now we have been living under the virtual dictatorship of Big Business which all but drove us to ruin in 1929….
Government policy is fixed in Wall Street and transmitted through the corporation executives….
Davis was irate that "firms [such] as General Motors could make $600,000,000 profit while unemployment skyrocketed."
Davis finished this particular shot at GM with a revealing statement, indicative of his far-left view of economic success:
As for free enterprise, it doesn't live here anymore. At the same time we have manufactured a national horror of socialism. Meanwhile, the dictatorship of the monopolies is driving us down the road to ruin.
And so, with still rising unemployment and a mounting depression, the time draws nearer when we will have to decide to oust the monopolies and restore a competing system of free enterprise, or let the government own and operate our major industries.
Frank Marshall Davis did not bother explaining which option he preferred. Given that he was obviously a man of the far left, a communist, a Party member even, he no doubt favored the option of letting the government own and operate our major industries.
Two weeks later, in a February 9, 1950 piece, Davis again went after GM, asking rhetorically: "With no brink-of-war economy, how could General Motors make $600,000,000 in one year in the face of rising unemployment?"
He would continue to call out these alleged obscene profits by the automaker. He plainly did not like General Motors.
In short, it would be easy to picture Frank Marshall Davis, if he were president of the United States, nationalizing GM. Clearly, Davis would have favored some significant government action to manage and control General Motors. I'm certain he would have been pleased with Barack Obama's actions with GM.
Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and author of the new book, The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor.
this is what wrong with Mitt; now listen "I'm not who they say that I am and your vote will proof it", pretty simple for a third grader wet & wild out field type of comments don't he understand that the white house will be alright with out Mitt in other words & I'm about to close my comment. Caucasians have always needed a practice which is don't tell everything you know & hang on to way out comments which are basically a waist of time Romney your just another lyre your habit is in the public America's eyes changing courses was exactly why we stuck our noises in other country's business just to name a few thing about yourself.
Mitt Romney,,,, You are a LIAR. Can people not see this or are all of you a bunch of ignorant imbeciles?
Integrity is something Romney can never buy. Did he ever have it at any time?
Romney wanted to teach the auto companies to fish. Obama gave them a fish, but he had no fishing license. We will be revisiting the bailouts again, like we do every 5 years or so.
Romney wanted to teach them to drown. Obama insisted that they swim.
A million jobs were saved. Romney's Titanic didn't happen. If you mean "structured bankruptcy", you say so, you don't claim you meant to say it years later. Do you not know that Romney is a liar? Tell the truth.
BLAH BLAH BALH cut and paste Bull@!$%# from somebody that tells you minons what to do and think, that is why Rush is on in the morning, so he can fill your head with Bull Sh!T early in the day.
Another, Chicken voting for Col. Sander's, for the promise of feed for a few days, just to be fattend & have your head removed! Would you like to be fried as Original or Extra Crispy! However it really does not matter much once your head is removed.
Republican voters want their economic disaster back. "Do it to me one more time".
Mitts name fits him well, the RepubliCON and Teabager bosses have there hand so far up his ass they make him say anything for votes every day.
He fits like a MITT! WHAT A PUPPET HE IS!
The only reason they had meatloaf at there Ohio rally is Romney was hoping to bait Chris Christi into attending! Really FREE Meatloaf!