Just how uninformed does President Obama think that American voters are? Judging from the misrepresentations coming out of the Obama camp regarding the General Motors’ bankruptcy process, it would appear that the Administration believes it can get away with rewriting history as the President continues to imply that GM never even went bankrupt. The obviously false implication continues to go unquestioned by mainstream media.
Realclearpolitics.com quotes Obama as saying during an Ohio campaign tour, “When the American auto industry was on the brink of collapse, more than 1 million jobs were on the line. Gov. Romney said we should just let Detroit go bankrupt. I refused to turn my back on communities like this one. I was betting on the American worker . . . and three years later, the American auto industry has come roaring back.”
This is not the first time that Democrats and members of the left wing media have stated that Romney would have let GM go bankrupt, as if a bankruptcy never happened. It is also debatable that GM is “roaring back” considering that its stock price is down about 35% (costing taxpayers additional billions of dollars) since the company began trading almost two years ago as it continues to be weighed down by UAW obligations and weak European operations.
Newsbusters.org had previously exposed that liberal commentator, Ed Schultz (of the Ed Show), manically insisted that a GM bankruptcy never occurred. During his radio show, Schultz responded to Romney’s claim that a managed bankruptcy was his idea and that was finally what was done. Regarding the idea that GM went bankrupt, Shultz rants, “WHOA! WHOA! WHOA! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! What do you mean, finally when that was done? It was not done. It was not done. It was not done. They (pause) reprioritized within the framework of what they had.”
C’mon now, “They reprioritized within the framework of what they had?” Ed, here’s news for you; GM filed for bankruptcy. This is not debatable. The scary part of the story is that it is not just extreme left wing members of the media who are negligent in presenting the truth regarding events surrounding GM. Slightly left wing news networks have yet to do a segment to “keep them honest” and counter the blatantly false representation that GM was “saved,” “restructured,” or “reprioritized,” as opposed to going bankrupt. It would appear that media bias, along with the billions of dollars GM spends annually on marketing, are influencing the tone of coverage.
Journalists should question President Obama the next time he implies that Romney would have taken a different course than what transpired by allowing GM to go bankrupt. Yes or no, Mr. President; isn’t a bankruptcy what actually happened at GM? And while we’re at it, didn’t the politically-favored UAW (which had equal legal standing to other unsecured creditors) receive preferential treatment during the said bankruptcy? OK, let’s not push it with the second question, but shouldn’t we at least get an admission that GM actually went bankrupt?
It remains to be seen just how uninformed the American public is. Those that know about the unethical aspects of the GM bankruptcy process will continue to boycott the company’s products, particularly if misrepresentations continue to be made by those involved. I’m hopeful that the presidential debates will help bring to light the unethical aspects of the entire auto bailout debacle. If Obama wants to campaign on the “success” of GM and Detroit and take credit for saving the auto industry, voters should get the facts and decide for themselves if bankrupting once-great American industrial corporations to protect union cronies at the expense of taxpayers qualifies as a success.
Mark Modica is an NLPC Associate Fellow.