In the year before the President took office, the American auto industry lost more than 400,000 jobs. Chrysler and GM were facing liquidation.

President Obama had a choice: He could have extended billions of dollars of taxpayer support without requiring any real changes. He also could have allowed the companies to collapse, which, because they are closely linked to networks of suppliers, dealers and other auto companies, would have had a dramatic ripple effect through the industry. Independent forecasts projected that, were the companies to fail, it could have eliminated more than 1 million jobs. Instead he chose a different way: standing behind the American auto industry, but requiring the companies to undergo painful restructuring to become competitive for the future.

So last week – two years after making that difficult decision – the President delivered an accounting of its results to date. In doing so, he pointed out that Chrysler had more than repaid the $8.5 billion that the Obama administration invested in the company. That’s a fact. Chrysler has repaid $10.6 billion in loans, and the Treasury recovered another $560 million by selling its remaining stake in the company to Fiat last week.

It is also true that the prior administration had invested $4 billion in the company prior to President Obama taking office. But let’s be clear: had President Obama not taken action, Chrysler would have liquidated and that money would have been gone. Instead of losing all $4 billion of those dollars, we have recovered more than 70% of them for taxpayers, in addition to all of the funds committed by President Obama.

Given those facts, it is not only factually accurate for President Obama to note the full recovery – and then some – of the funds he decided to commit to Chrysler, but it is an accurate description of the circumstance he faced and the decisions he made with respect to the company.

Read the rest.

As always Barry's first impulse is to lie. Its what Kool-aid chugger's like most about him.

when the WaPo (which ADORES Obama) gives him three "Pinochios" (out of four)...that is actually NEWS!

This lying sack of shit we call "President" is, well, a lying sack of shit.

Maybe the WaPo should change to "Sacks of Shit" instead of "Pinochios"...Obama would have gotten TEN!

*cue loudspeaker sound effects*

Attention Wizbang readers!
Major propaganda spew in Aisle 1!

Art W,

So your response to a WAPO article critiquing obama's speech as being dishonest is to link to a White House press release? You are going to counter a critique with links to supporting data with a flat assertion that what the White House says must be true?

Excuse me if I think that your link is rather lame. Why don't you link to something that explains how obama overroad the bankruptcy laws to benefit his union friends and screw over stockholders, who included a lot of people's retirement savings?

Or maybe you could talk about how the Chrysler loan repayment was made possible by loaning money to Fiat. Neat little slight of hand that one. I suppose your White house talking points failed to mention the $3.5B that we gave Fiat.

Keep on drinking the kool-aid.

Comrade Art, when it says, "Read the rest," it's a good idea to ... uh ... read the rest.

Here's an excerpt:

Under the administration’s math, the U.S. government will receive $11.2 billion back from Chrysler, far more than the $8.5 billion Obama extended.

Through this sleight-of-hand accounting, the White House can conveniently ignore Bush’s loan, but even the Treasury Department admits that U.S. taxpayers will not recoup about $1.3 billion of the entire $12.5 billion investment when all is said and done.

The White House justifies not counting the Bush money because, it says, that money was completely spent when Obama was making a tough political decision on whether to extend another loan. In other words, a decision to do nothing at the time would have resulted in the immediate loss of the $4 billion that Bush had extended.

This is chicanery. Under the president’s math, Chrysler paid back 100 percent of Obama’s loan and less than 70 percent of Bush’s loan. A more honest presentation would combine the two figures to say U.S. taxpayers got back 90 percent of what they invested. In fact, that is how the Treasury and other administration officials frequently portray it; it is just when Obama speaks that the numbers get so squishy.

Obama lied. The economy died.

Heeheeheehee.
Art W(oop) has now retreated to the bunker:The White House site.

If saving the US auto industry only cost taxpayers $1.3 billion, that's a bargain.

Losing the industry could have cost a million jobs or more - forever. Instead, those jobs are there, generating revenues for the long term. Money well spent, I say.

Jay

"it is just when Obama speaks that the numbers get so squishy"

Here let me fix that for you

"it is just when Obama speaks that is when you know he is lying"

Art W

How about those preferred stockholders that got screwed so the unions could get the best parts of the company?

Have to take care of Obama's supporters first now dont we.

The lying leftists circle the wagons around their messiah.

a decision to do nothing at the time would have resulted in the immediate loss of the $4 billion that Bush had extended.

Yep that's the same $4B that the obama admin later forgave in 2009. Add to that the $3.5B that the DOE gave Fiat so it could increase its equity stake to 46% and you get $7.5B that hasn't been repaid. It's sounding a lot closer to 40% of the $12.5B has been paid back.

I'm guessing that obama is banking on the crappy public school system not teaching people basic math skills to keep him in power.

Barry Soetoro lied and lied.
He wants America to die and die.

Nobama 2012 followed by prison time for Holder & scores of Barry's corrupt Marxist minions.

If saving the US auto industry only cost taxpayers $1.3 billion, that's a bargain.

Losing the industry could have cost a million jobs or more - forever.

Instead, those jobs are there, generating revenues for the long term.

Another way to save the auto industry would have been for bankrupcy to work the way it is intended. If that had been done then the auto companies would very likely have come through with their balance sheets in proper order with long term debts restructured in a way that they could pay them down and they would have been in a position to use their assets effectively.

Instead we got a payout to the unions that did nothing to improve the company positions and we got taxpayer money dumped down a rat hole that hasn't addressed the long term obligations of GM at all.

The left and particularly obama, want to mislead you into believing that had GM and Chrysler declared bankrupcy that they would have been shut down, the factories closed and razed, and all the technology and intellectual property destroyed. No so. They would have been freed from the debt burden to be used to create jobs again. The more likely result would be that we would have a stronger auto industry, better able to compete than we do today. But the big loser would have been the UAW and their cushy contracts so obama stepped in and violated bankrupcy law in order to fix it for them.

Yes, you're probably right, McGehee. President McCain would have had us on the road to recovery for sure by now by standing by and letting the free market work its magic.

Keep on a drinking that Kook Aid Bruce...Your Obumasiah requires it!

And how healthy is GM?

They are being forced into producing the Volt, which is wildly overpriced and does not have a clear market. GM will almost certainly have to subsidize the saes of the car. It would never have been put into production had the company not been controled by the obama administration.

So we the taxpayers have sunk billions into GM so they could build a car that has no clear market, costs twice or more what the consumer would rationally pay for a car that size. That is making a healthy auto industry?

I can't wait to see what you guys rationalize as a good health care system.

Yeah Bruce, Obamanomics is working wonders, isn't it?

You can divert attention and wonder what McCain would have done until the cows come home. It means squat.

Instead you can actually see what your Obamassiah and his minions are doing to the economy.

What's the matter Bruce, reality not good enough for you? Go drink some more Kook Aid.

And now there's another batch of Republican caused economic bad news.

The Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association told CNN that after Gov. Nathan Deal signed a law modeled after Arizona's SB1070 in May, farm workers have fled the area. Some farmers lost as much as 50 percent of their workforce, they say. (The law is already being challenged in court; Arizona's similar SB 1070 has been blocked by two higher courts.)

Fifth-generation Georgia farmer Gary Paulk told local paper The Daily Journal that he has only been able to find half of the 300 workers he needs to pick his blueberry fields, and that's after hiking wages 20 percent. Another farmer said he had to switch to (less efficient) machines when he couldn't find enough workers for his fields this spring.

"A lot of migrant workers who may have migrated to Georgia are avoiding the place," says Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform Chair Craig Regelbrugge. "The field reports are pointing to significant loss of crops."

Cost of some crops are going to skyrocket - and you know who the biggest whiners are going to be, don't you? The slow-thinking Republicans.

Art W,
So I take it that by changing the subject you are conceding three point on the auto industry?

"And now there's another batch of . . . "

What's the matter Art? Can't defend your previous statement so you're changing the subject?

Typical F*cking ObamaTurd!

wooop jr.-

"The Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association told CNN that after Gov. Nathan Deal signed a law modeled after Arizona's SB1070 in May, farm workers have fled the area. Some farmers lost as much as 50 percent of their workforce, they say."

Whats the sense of growing a workforce when the government steals the profits? You have to get big brother out of the way for the economy to grow.

Have some more kook nectar and chill out.

Art w,

I would argue that these are not jobs that Americans won't do but they are jobs that illegal aliens who are exploited by disreputable employers did for far less than the job was worth. So you are in favor of exploiting vulnerable people because they are minorities?

Maybe you think that the inconvenience of paying a litle more for your food is too much and that you'd rather that these people continue to be used as little more than slave labor.

"I would argue that these are not jobs that Americans won't do but they are jobs that illegal aliens who are exploited by disreputable employers did for far less than the job was worth. So you are in favor of exploiting vulnerable people because they are minorities?"

And have you stopped beating your wife, Jim?

McCain had a plan. Obama has a plan, but can't get cooperation from the Repubs.

So what we're seeing is the Republican plan in action.

And it's going to cost a fortune and put some farms out of business, at a time when pressure on food prices are already upward.

Not very smart.

And apparently you're ok with that. Well, at least you are taking ownership and saying "Yes, we Republicans are ok with this result...

Cause Republican are really concerned that the minorities are being exploited?

Excuse me while I laugh my ass off...

The only way in which Obama could destroy the middle classes more thoroughly is if he went all Libya on us and literally shot Hellfire missiles from Predator drones into every major suburb across the country.

Just as you changed the subject before, I wil take your last response as, yes you are ok with the exploitation of minority workers.

Art W,

So migrant workers come the the US, some illegally. Less than reputable farmers employ them because they realize that they can get away with paying them lower wages because they need to keep their employment off the books. Other farmers feel that in order to compete on price they need to follow suit. This depresses the wages for all migrant workers not just the illegal ones.

SO when the GOP comes along and passes a law that will make it riskier for the illegal migrant workers to take a job in Georgia that's wrong because it may cause a farmer who, as we will recall is exploiting those workers, to go out of business. It;s also wrong because it may cause food prices to go up.

So what happened to all that social justice bullshit? What happened to that fairness bullshit? It doesn't matter because you want those people to be exploited? It matters when factory jobs are going to Indonesia and then it is horrible to exploit those Indonesian workers. Oh wait... Those jobs matter because those were union jobs. So much for the social justice crap.

And as for food prices going up how about the dems doing away with the ethanol subsidy? That is doing more than immigration laws to jack up the cost of food.

So we see that you really don't care about minorities. You don't really care about social justice or fairness. You really don't care about food prices. But you do care about unions. You care about justifying an auto bailout that paid the UAW millions of dollars. You care about exploitation of foreign workers when they might be taking union jobs but not when they are taking nonunion jobs.

So you don't really think much about those things you believe in do you? Because if you did you would realize that your actions are contrary to those ideals you claim to believe in. Or maybe it really was just bullshit all along.

Bruce Henry, why not have the government save the construction industry too. According to your logic it would save the country millions of jobs, many more than the auto industry. I guess this would make money for the government too?

Sadly this is only possible with liberal math, it doesn't work in reality. I live in reality.

In another batch of Republican-caused bad news, President Lincoln issued a proclamation declaring that all slaves in several of the southern United States, including Georgia, shall henceforth and forever be free. As a result, many Georgia plantation owners report losing as much as 50% of their cotton crops...

/sarc

Yes, I know: migrant farm workers aren't quite slaves. Nevertheless, it seems strange to be asked to feel sorry for farmers* who have been using illegal (and, hence, often exploited) labor to get in their crops. It's the same song we've heard from the amnesty crowd before: enforce the laws against illegal immigrants and a head of lettuce will cost $5!

In other words: screw the rule of law! We gotta have cheap agricultural products!

----

(*) Incidentally, I'm guessing that the majority of these "farmers" are not the classic yeoman, tending the 100 acre farm passed down to him from his great-great-great-grandfather. Rather, I suspect that these are modern "mega-farms" of thousands of acres. They are, in effect, corporations. You know: the root of all evil in liberal minds? Will we next see lefties pushing to liberate these farmers from various regulations regarding such things as fertilizers and pesticides? How about labor laws? Since the goal is to have cheap food, why not?

Art W,

For all of your repetition of the Obama propaganda and subsequent attempts to hijack the topic, I notice one thing:

You have not dealt the the issue that Obama was misleading in his speech.
Care to comment or defend the Kenyan/Hawaiian/Indonesian Community Orgainzer?
Or will you dodge the issue yet again?

Art W

How about moving the democratic voters in Georgia off the welfare rolls by telling them "Hey we have plenty of farm jobs open now"

Oh wait. Democrat voters shouldnt have to work for money, they should just get it from the govt shouldnt they.

Bruce

Why cant uncle sam just buy all the houses on the housing market. That will save the construction jobs and get people working again wont it?

BTW Art W.

I saw where the head of GM stated that the bailout costs the taxpayers about $13 billion but he felt it was worth it. He also wants the govt to add another $1 a gallon tax on gasoline to help consumers decide to buy more fuel efficient cars.

Obama did not save the auto industry. He saved his union votes, plain and simple. Obama has no idea what a business is.

Since the early 20th century, there has always been a "waiver" for farm workers to enter out country at harvest time. As always, Art is full of shit. ww

17. Posted by Bruce Henry | June 7, 2011 10:06 PM

As for my opinion of McCain, enjoy this.

Umm, Art W?

You have not dealt the the issue that Obama was misleading in his speech.

Are you ducking the question?