Lil White Lies: Closing Arguments

His position also contradicts the Republicans’ position of opposing President Obama’s auto rescue.  --Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon

Another politi-flubbed Politi-Flub post from Sublime Bloviations concerns the fact-checking of Paul Ryan’s statement about the Janesville, Wisconsin GM Plant relating to (prior to) his acceptance speech before the RNC in Tampa, Florida. Even though other fact-checkers have weighed in with similar conclusions (except for certain PolitiFact detractors ), writer Bryan White says “PolitiFact has earned its status as the least-dependable of the stable of left-leaning fact check organizations.” He makes his case starting with his interpretation of a speech that Obama made in February, 2008 at the Janesville plant itself. He writes that it means there was, in fact, “a pledge from the president to work to enact policies to keep the plant open.” Here’s the key excerpt from Obama: 

And I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years. The question is not whether a clean energy economy is in our future, it’s where it will thrive. I want it to thrive right here in the United States of America; right here in Wisconsin; and that’s the future I’ll fight for as your President.

It should also be noted, and I display a screen-snip at the bottom of this post just in case he fixes it and denies he did it, that the speech was not made by President-elect Obama in December 2008, but by then Senator Obama on February 13, 2008. A Sublimely Bloviating -Flub, perhaps to give an appearance that Obama made these remarks with the knowledge of the plant closing. But to continue, if White had looked at the previous two paragraphs of Obama’s statement, he would find that in context, Obama wasn’t talking about “policies to keep the plant open."  Not just because the closure wasn't even announced until several months later.  He was talking about how energy policy could produce new jobs, best described in an article by Whet Mozer in Chicago Magazine:

In context, Obama wasn't speaking so much about the auto bailout (which was just gearing up) as the idea that clean-energy investment could allow Janesville to remake its industrial sector, as made clear by the two previous paragraphs:

"I believe that we can create millions of those jobs around a clean, renewable energy future. A few hours northeast of here is the city of Manitowoc [MAN-a-ta-WOC]. For over a century, it was the home of Mirro manufacturing – a company that provided thousands of jobs and plenty of business. In 2003, Mirro closed its doors for good after losing thousands of jobs to Mexico.

But in the last few years, something extraordinary has happened. Thanks to the leadership of Governor Doyle and Mayor Kevin Crawford, Manitowoc has re-trained its workers and attracted new businesses and new jobs. Orion Energy Systems works with companies to reduce their electricity use and carbon emissions. And Tower Tech is now making wind turbines that are being sold all over the world. Hundreds of people have found new work, and unemployment has been cut in half."

It wasn't a promise to keep the factory making cars; it was an expressed belief that a sweeping energy policy could give the town the resources to produce something else, like passenger rail cars.

This fits with the fact the plant was still operating at the time Obama was there.  Unless Obama knew the plant was going to close, what's the purpose of promising to keep it open?  So White could only expect PolitiFact Wisconsin to “locate such a pledge” given his construed-without-context, untimely,  biased interpretation.     Which means they wouldn’t find it, since there's no such thing.  

Next up, and in more heated discussion, there’s the question of “when is the plant closed”? If you read Politifact’s ruling, it’s very important to note that Kertscher wrote that the plant was effectively shut down on December 23, 2008, in the planning for many months.  The conservative crowd, of course, says Janesville didn’t shut down in December of 2008, but in April of 2009, when Obama was president. Basically it ceased regular production (see photo above). In the ensuing few months, it had 57 workers completing a contract order from Isuzu for a vehicle called the NPR W series . The conservative websites say it was still producing (what’s termed at GM “medium duty”) “trucks” but they were actually commercial forward cabs, produced at a miniscule rate compared to the regular production (44 jobs per hour versus 2). Nevertheless, in December 2008, the plant was largely idled except for the special order for Isuzu; and it has been on “standby” ever since as again described by Whet Mozer of Chicago Magazine:

So by April, Obama was president and the plant was finally, fully idle. But was it closed? It sort of depends on what you mean. GM put the plant on "standby"—in the event that sales picked up, GM could fire the factory back up again. This was hopeful yet unfortunate for Janesville—it didn't employ anyone, and the city couldn't do anything with the site. So by that summer, Wisconsin offered GM $200 million in incentives to locate new small-car production in the old SUV plant; Ryan, Herb Kohl, Russ Feingold, and Tammy Baldwin all met with GM officials to get the plant back online. But Wisconsin was beaten out by Michigan; GM moved the production to Lake Orion, where another GM plant was scheduled to close.

Since then, the plant has remained in limbo, and the Janesville Gazette has continued to follow the now-quiet saga. In 2010, GM signaled that it would move work to one of its two standby plants, the other in Spring Hill, Tennessee—which, at the time, was not entirely idled, but operating below production. In 2011, GM reopened the Spring Hill plant, keeping Janesville on standby.

It's still owned by GM, and still in standby mode.

He also noted that “the auto-industry bailout did aid GM in saving jobs, including the jobs of Janesville plant employees, but only for those who relocated; the jobs were lost to Janesville itself.”

Comparing production rates, you might say that, based on number of production employees, GM was 93% idle in December 2008. In terms of production it was about 96% idle. In terms of regular production, it was 100% idle. So if White and his fellow detractors want to be anal about it, yes, it didn’t shut down production, it was just almost 100% idle, and there was no regular production, because it had shut down in December. Or ask yourself, is 93% of workers laid off, or 96% of production suspended the equivalent of an “effective shut down”?

NPR’s Mark Memmott provided more background to the entire matter in an article entitled “Janesville Debate: Dissecting Ryan’s Claim, Obama’s Promise and the Facts.” He repeats the same numbers: “The figures mean that about 93 percent of the workers had been laid off before 2009.”

White likes to make hay with PolitiFact about “effective tax rates.” Here he takes the other side of the argument for what is meant by “effectively shut down.” And of course, there’s also the deeper issue of limited government/spending cut supporter Ryan’s hypocrisy with regard to wanting federal dollars for the Janesville Plant. But I’ll maybe leave that for another post.

Flubbing the Politi-Flub....?