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Payne: Debbie DebateItNever
Posted by hpayne on October 23, 2012
“Senator Stabenow, doesn’t the LG Chem boondoggle contradict your claim that green subsidies bring jobs to America? And wouldn’t voting for the Keystone pipeline have brought many more jobs?”
As the Obama-Stabenow stimulus implodes, that might make for an interesting debate question. If there were a debate.
But Michigan’s junior senator – and avowed defender of the planet – has refused any debates with her challenger, former Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra. From Massachusetts to West Virginia to Florida, Senate, House, and gubernatorial candidates are embracing debates this fall. But Stabenow is running from them. Instead, she has used her war chest of Big Labor-fed campaign dollars to launch a massive ad assault attacking her opponent as granny’s worst enemy.
Like President Obama, the Democrat’s air war has built for the incumbent a solid lead. Now imagine if you were Mitt Romney and were denied debates. Game. Set. Match.
After Romney’s debate-fed insurgence, Stabenow suddenly closed down debate negotiations.
Her campaign defends its strategy, claiming it had accepted two public debates – at the Detroit Economic Club and at Grand Valley State. But she refused to televise the DAC debate – and only allowed in public broadcasting for the college venue.
Again, imagine Mitt Romney agreeing to those conditions.
In a press conference October 11, Hoekstra said “it doesn’t do a whole lot of good (to debate) if no one can see it.” Fair enough. “It’s clear she doesn’t want to debate,” he added at a town hall this weekend. “She doesn’t want to defend her record. Anybody can call me up today and say, ‘Will you go here, will you debate her at the Detroit Econ Club or Grand Valley?’ The answer is yes. Her answer is, ‘I’m sorry. I’m busy.'”
Michigan deserves answers for the waste of green stimulus dollars, the gutting of Delphi pensions in the auto bailout and why Stabenow did not intervene – as well as questions about Hoekstra’s long career in public service. By ignoring the debate, Stabenow is ignoring Michigan.
Payne: Obama’s auto bailout whopper
Posted by hpayne on October 22, 2012
The Boca Bout was about foreign policy, but a subplot was of particular interest to Michigan’s economy: President Obama’s whopper on the auto bailout. For the first time, the two candidates went head-to-head on the Government Motors details – and Obama got it wrong. Badly wrong. Damn-the-facts-I’m-clinging-to-my-talking-points wrong.
For the record, Mitt Romney has always suggested that he favored a managed bankruptcy with government support if needed – despite Obama & Associated Press attempts to twist the facts.
“The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk,” wrote Romney in a 2008 New York Times op-ed. He has expanded on this view in numerous interviews with this writer and others – perhaps most explicitly in an interview with The Detroit News editorial board in February:
“I would never have allowed the auto industry to disappear,” he said then, adding that – at a time when capital markets were frozen – “if government financing was needed, fine. In a managed bankruptcy process, government could have provided guarantees, financing, and DIP financing.”
Yet, Obama insisted in the debate on his “Let Detroit to go bankrupt” caricature. The exchange is devastating to Obama’s veracity:
ROMNEY: The president mentioned the auto industry and that somehow I would be in favor of jobs being elsewhere. Nothing could be further from the truth. . . . I said they need – these companies need to go through a managed bankruptcy, and in that process they can get government help and government guarantees, but they need to go through bankruptcy to get rid of excess cost and the debt burden that they’d – they’d built up.
OBAMA: Governor Romney, that’s not what you said.
MR. ROMNEY: Fortunately, the president – you can take – you can take a look at the op-ed.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Governor, you did not –
MR. ROMNEY: You can take a look at the op-ed.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You did not say that you would provide, Governor, help.
MR. ROMNEY: I said that we would provide guarantees and – and that was what was able to allow these companies to go through bankruptcy, to come out of bankruptcy. Under no circumstances would I do anything other than to help this industry get on its feet. And the idea that has been suggested that I would liquidate the industry – of course not. Of course not.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Let’s check the record.
But this time, Candy Crowley didn’t come to Obama’s rescue by butchering the record. The record clearly shows Romney is right. And Obama is fibbing.
Payne: Ground Zero, Ohio
Posted by hpayne on October 21, 2012
Columbus, Ohio – A drive across the battleground state of Ohio this weekend revealed a fall political landscape in full bloom – from colorful local races to dark scars of a divisive presidency.
“Lawless for Sheriff” read lawn signs across Pickaway County, Ohio, just south of the Ohio beltway. Of all public offices, Independent Jason Lawless chose sheriff as his goal. He will face a formidable foe in Democrat Robert Radcliffe, the third Radcliffe in line for the sheriff’s occupied by his father and grandfather before him.
Should Jason win his long-shot campaign, Pickaway will be Lawless for the first time.
North and south of Columbus reveal two different Ohios. To the southeast lies coal country where Obama’s anti-global warming fanaticism is decimating mining communities, leaving thousands of unemployed workers across the Ohio Valley from Kentucky and Ohio through West Virginia and south Pennsylvania.
“Obama’s No Jobs Zone” read billboards in this part of the state.
“This has not been Mr. Oil, or Mr. Gas, or Mr. Coal. Talk to the people that are working in those industries,” said an impassioned Romney in the second debate of his visit to an Ohio mine in August. ” I was in coal country. People grabbed my arms and said, ‘Please save my job.’ When the president ran for office, he said if you build a coal plant, you can go ahead, but you’ll go bankrupt.”
This callous disregard for America’s coal workers has played out despite this country’s desperate need for jobs in a slow recovery. Yet a partisan Democratic media largely ignored Romney’s debate comments. Just as it has ignored the tragedy in eastern Ohio.
The Obamadiaa has not ignored Northern Ohio, where Obama’s auto bailout brought a sigh of relief to communities around Chrysler’s massive, sprawling, cornfield-eating Jeep assembly plant outside Toledo (did I say Obama was anti-global warming?). Obama-Biden have basked as saviors here – towing a cheerleading reporters notably silent after Romney’s coal fields visit.
“Romney will raise taxes on the middle class” fibs a giant billboard northeast of Columbus paid for by Obama for America. The sign is fiction – Romney’s plan cuts tax rates by 20 percent on middle class earners and the sign apparently takes its cues from a fringe study that only predicts that Romney will have to raise taxes some day, sometime.
This weekend, the Columbus-Dispatch newspaper endorsed the GOP candidate for president, citing the need for a new sheriff after four years of “economic stagnation” and “record-setting debt.”
Four years ago, the same editorial page eerily predicted the Obama years:
” Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, is a rousing motivational speaker, but his experience and achievements — eight years in the Illinois Legislature and less than four in the U.S. Senate — do not stand comparison with McCain’s,” wrote the Dispatch in 2008. “A resume containing so little evidence of leadership and accomplishment leaves in question Obama’s ability to handle the most responsible and difficult job in the world, especially at a time when the nation faces a combination of problems so large and complex that they would challenge even the most seasoned leader. Nor does it seem likely that a man who has traveled in the left lane of American politics for his entire adult life really is the bipartisan centrist that he claims to be.”
Prescient words indeed. The Buckeye State reflects Obama in full. A master politician with both eyes on the next election, he strategically bailed out Big Auto in order to secure the Big Labor strongholds of southern Michigan and northern Ohio. But this inexperienced and deeply ideological manager has ruined working-class lives in eastern Ohio and beyond, leaving Americans unemployed and deeply divided.
America isn’t lawless, it’s leaderless.
Payne: Iacocca for Mitt (and Barack)
Posted by hpayne on October 18, 2012
“America needs a turnaround,” announced former Chrysler turnaround artist and celebrity executive Lee Iacocca Thursday. ” Our people are hurting. . . and we just aren’t doing the things that would get our country back on the right track.” In short, Obama’s policies have failed and the country needs competent management, says Romney’s fellow businessman.
But in fairness to Obama, it should be noted that Iacocca himself once endorsed two cornerstones of the Obama formula: auto bailouts and creating a new green economy.
Though critical of its details, Iacocca has praised the White House’s political, Chapter 363 restructuring of the automakers. More significantly, Iacocca has long been an advocate of government-subsidized efforts to electrify America’s vehicle fleet – an effort that has proved a spectacular boondoggle as government -backed battery-makers like A123 Systems have gone bankrupt.
The founder of Lido Motors ten years ago, Iacocca was an early advocate of so-called NEVs, neighborhood electric vehicles, that in 2009 won a $2500 federal tax credit for buyers via Obama’s stimulus blowout. NEVs are one of the clever loopholes that automakers have carved out to help them meet Democrats’ onerous MPG standards.
What’s more, Iacocca has been a strong advocate for pure electric cars like Nissan’s electric Leaf – which receive a $7500 federal tax credit – saying “there’s going to be a scramble for the pure electric car.” Struggling A123, however, is a poster child for an electric market that has failed to materialize as the Leaf and other electrics have seen sales sour.
Auto icon Iacocca’s endorsement gives a powerful jolt to a Romney campaign that Obama has tried to caricature as anti-auto for opposing the UAW bailout. But Iacocca is also a reminder that plenty of CEOs swallowed Obama’s fairy tale vision of a new Green economy.
Payne: Obama’s ‘doubled fuel efficiency’ con
Posted by hpayne on October 17, 2012
In the second presidential debate, President Obama & Media touted his MPG mandates as evidence of his commitment to energy independence. “That’s why we doubled fuel efficiency standards on cars,” said Obama at the Hofstra town hall. “That means that in the middle of the next decade, any car you buy, you’re going to end up going twice as far on a gallon of gas.”
“This is true,” cheered The Washington Post. No, it’s not.
It is, in fact, evidence of the false promise of government regulation. Never mind the “doubling” of fuel economy to 54.5 mpg by 2025, cars won’t come close to increasing fuel economy by 30 percent to 35.5 mpg (from the current, random, 27.5 mpg federal standard ) that Obama has mandated just three years from now.
That’s because, in Obama World (coming soon to a health care system near you) standards are meant to gamed by lobbyists with deep pockets.
35.5-by-2016? Ha. The average MPG of vehicles sold this September is a mere 23.2 MPG according to industry analyst TrueCar. That’s because, even with gas approaching $4 a gallon, fuel efficiency isn’t the only reason buyers purchase cars. So, to square market realities with Obama World, the president hands out expensive loopholes to corporate lobbyists.
Take the ethanol loophole.
Few fuel their cars with ethanol because it has never made economic sense. At $3.45 a gallon today, for example, ethanol – which goes 30 percent fewer miles than does a gallon of gas – can’t compete when $3.82 gas is just 11 percent more expensive (do the math).
And yet automakers in the U.S. market continue to make – and publicize – “flex-fuel vehicles” that can run on both gas and ethanol. Why?
Because “in calculating mileage numbers to meet the federal government’s fuel economy standards, automakers are allowed to use the average of the gasoline mileage and the (ethanol) mileage for flex fuel vehicles. But the E85 number is multiplied by seven to reward them for producing vehicles capable of using the alternative fuel,” explains The Detroit News.
Multiplied by seven.
That random number, bought by auto lobbyists, helps automakers (along with more credits gained from electric cars, and natural gas cars, and different air conditioning fluids, and “placing louvers on car grilles to improve aerodynamics,” and we’re not making any of this up) meet President Obama’s equally random 30 percent fuel economy increase by 2016. Or the “doubling” of fuel economy by 2025.
These are fictional numbers set by bureaucrats and manipulated by lobbyist dollars. They are a con. They exist only in Obama World. And in presidential debates where a president and his media willfully mislead the American people into voting for more and more expensive regulations that drive up the price of their cars even as they don’t deliver the benefits claimed.
Payne: It’s the economy, Mr. President
Posted by hpayne on October 16, 2012
When the first two questions of a town hall debate come from a young voter worried he won’t have a job when he graduates and a gentleman who worries why gas prices have more than doubled in four years, it’s going to be a tough night for the incumbent. And these were New York voters.
President Barack Obama was back to his old feisty self Tuesday night – but the dynamics of this race fundamentally changed waaaay back with the first debate. As valiantly as Obama fought to bring the debate back to his themes of class warfare and Romney’s wealth, the voters aren’t interested. Those voters were the questioners in the Hofstra University town hall and none of them asked about Romney’s tax returns.
They had one collective concern: It’s the economy, stupid.
As long as the media controlled the airwaves, Obama’s themes dominated the discussion. Now that Romney had direct access to voters via TV debates, Obama’s envy issues seem small compared o the big themes of unemployment, economic growth, and energy prices that Romney is about.
Just when you could hear the Democratic base cheering Obama’s haymakers, the Michigan native would stand up the incumbent with one his own.
The toe-to-toe confrontation on drilling was great theater – and devastating to President Glib. “How much did you cut licenses and permits on federal land and federal waters?” demanded Romney, wheeling on a suddenly stammering Obama who looked stunned that someone would challenge his audacious fib that he is a champion of carbon fuels.
“The proof of whether a strategy is working or not is what the price is that you’re paying at the pump,” Romney continued to push. “When the president took office, the price of gasoline here in Nassau County was about a buck eighty-six a gallon. Now it’s four bucks a gallon.”
Ouch.
Romney even sounded more empathetic as he talked of visiting coal miners under siege from Obama’s War on Coal. “I was just at a coal facility where some 1,200 people lost their jobs,” said Romney, airing the pain of Eastern Ohio and West Virginia that the MSM has been covering up. ” I don’t think anyone really believes that you’re a person who’s going to be pushing for oil and gas and coal.”
Time and again, Romney met more Obama promises for the next four years by bringing the discussion back to the last four years.
“I think you know better,” said Romney. ” I think you know that these last four years haven’t been so good as the president just described and that you don’t feel like you’re confident that the next four years are going to be much better either. He said that by now we’d have unemployment at 5.4 percent. He said that by now middle-income families would have a reduction in their health insurance premiums by $2,500 a year. It’s gone up by 2,500 (dollars) a year. There are. . . one out of six people in poverty. When he took office, 32 million people were on food stamps; today 47 million people are on food stamps. How about the growth of the economy? It’s growing more slowly this year than last year and more slowly last year than the year before.”
After the debate, I was on a TV panel with two Democrats who wanted to talk about how stiff Romney looked. About how uncomfortable he looked. But what’s uncomfortable is the numbers Romney cited.
Payne: Media’s fact-free auto fact check
Posted by hpayne on October 16, 2012
AP’s Debate Fact Checker gets its facts wrong Tuesday night on the auto bailout.
ROMNEY: “I know he keeps saying, ‘You want to take Detroit bankrupt.’ Well, the president took Detroit bankrupt. You took General Motors bankrupt. You took Chrysler bankrupt. So when you say that I wanted to take the auto industry bankrupt, you actually did. And I think it’s important to know that that was a process that was necessary to get those companies back on their feet, so they could start hiring more people. That was precisely what I recommended and ultimately what happened.”
THE FACTS: What Romney recommended did not happen, and his proposed path probably would have forced General Motors and Chrysler out of business. He opposed using government money to bail out the automakers, instead favoring privately financed bankruptcy restructuring. But the automakers were bleeding cash and were poor credit risks. The banking system was in crisis. So private loans weren’t available. Without government aid, both companies probably would have gone under and their assets sold in pieces.
AP is editorializing. Its facts are in error.
Romney is correct that “the president took Detroit bankrupt.” The administration took both GM and Chrysler into Chapter 363 bankruptcy, a politicized bankruptcy criticized as “end-running the legal process” by at least one prominent legal expert – in order to benefit Big Labor special interests at the expense of bondholders, teacher and firefighter pensions, Delphi salaried employees, and so on. Under Romney’s proposed Chapter 11, the companies and creditors would have gone into Chapter 11 bankruptcy court – but, in a crucial point ignored by AP, with federal financial help in order to secure supply chains and jobs.
AP’s claim that Romney’s “proposed path probably would have forced General Motors and Chrysler out of business” is not only contradicted by repeated statements by the candidate – but also by many industry experts.
“Without government aid, both companies probably would have gone under and their assets sold in pieces,” writes AP, getting its facts wrong about what Romney proposed.
“The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk,” wrote Romney in the 2008 New York Times op-ed that Obama & AP caricature as a call for Detroit to die. Furthermore, in numerous queries by this reporter, Romney has consistently hewed to a flexible line, saying that the federal government would have done what was necessary to keep GM and Chrysler – and its suppliers – alive while they worked through bankruptcy.
“I would never have allowed the auto industry to disappear,” the GOP candidate said in an interview with The Detroit News editorial board in February. He added that – at a time when capital markets were frozen – “if government financing was needed, fine. In a managed bankruptcy process, government could have provided guarantees, financing, and DIP financing.”
So much for AP’s fact checkers. Romney’s nuanced position has made him no friends on the libertarian Right. Fair enough. But AP’s caricature of Romney as a Darwinian advocate of bankruptcy is bad journalism.
Payne: Romney’s Snyder tax reform model
Posted by hpayne on October 15, 2012
With the presidential debates forcing the Democratic Chorus off its Obama-led character assassination-of-Romney theme and into actual public policy issues, the tune has changed. From Obama spokesmen to Detroit Free Press writers to ABC’s Martha Raddatz to Saturday Night Live, the new Democratic line is: Which loopholes would the Romney-Ryan tax plan close?
The question is a strategy meant to detour the GOP campaign from broad economic themes into the special interest weeds (like the Big Bird flap on the “what programs would you cut?” question). In truth, the tax code is a Swiss cheese of loopholes for powerful lobbies – which is precisely why the code needs to be streamlined and why any credible candidate – Republican of Democrat – leaves the details for the bargaining table.
Take Romney’s tax-reforming political twin, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder.
Like Romney, Snyder is a private equity, business turnaround specialist who made tax and spending reform his primary goals as a candidate in 2010. But in his “10-point plan to reinvent Michigan,” the tax reform details were limited to this:
“Point #2 Reform Michigan’s Tax System. Rick believes that we need to reduce the tax burden on families and businesses in Michigan. Rather than advocate for short-term solutions ” Rick wants to reform Michigan’s tax system so that it is competitive, simple, fair, transparent, efficient and facilitates economic growth.”
That’s all, folks.
On the campaign trail, he stuck to the broad outline, eschewing specifics save that he wanted to eliminate the Michigan Business Tax and replace it with a flat corporate income tax (Romney has also specified that he would like to eliminate the dividend tax and cut income rates by 20 percent) while closing tax loopholes (a mirror of Romney).
Upon entering office, One Tough Nerd followed through on his tax reform promise – and also brought specifics to the Legislature. It’s easy to see why he didn’t provide those details in the campaign. Tax loopholes, after all, come with very large special interest constituencies.
As governor, Snyder proposed a simplified tax structure of a 6 percent corporate tax and a reduction to 4.25 individual income tax. To maintain revenue neutrality, he eliminated tax credits like Big Hollywood’s 42 percent film subsidy and introduced a new tax on pensions (Michigan being one of the few states that had exempted pensions from taxation).
The elimination of tax goodies caused a storm of protest from the lobbies that had protected them: seniors, the film industry, and so on. Snyder fought each battle and eventually won most of what he wanted from the Legislature. But had Snyder proposed these details during the campaign, his candidacy would have been derailed into putting out special interest brush fires. It’s the same reason that Romney won’t let Obama & Media distract his tax proposal.
Campaigns are for broad themes. Governing is for the details.
Payne: Uplander, Michigan Power Couple
Posted by hpayne on October 14, 2012
The big story out of Tigertown this weekend is that the Orange & Black have a 2-0 game lead over the Yankee Evil Empire.
The second biggest story is that Tigers’ Ace Justin Verlander and St. Joseph-born super model Kate Upton are officially Michigan’s First Celebrity Power Couple.
The long-rumored pair are an item, their proud grandparents confirmed over the weekend. “[Kate] was at his first game in Detroit against Oakland,” Curvy Kate’s grandfather, Stephen, told Celebuzz, an Internet gossip website. “She has all of our support.”
“I heard he has been on dates with a Sports Illustrated girl. I saw a photo – she’s beautiful,” added Richard Verlander, Sr. “They make a good-looking pair because he’s a good-looking man, too. Justin is a fine boy, and whoever he ends up with is lucky. He’s not only a great baseball player – he’s a great guy.”
Seems the Yanks are not only coming in second to the Tigers on the playing field – but also when playing the female field. Once celebrity dating partner for the likes of Kate Hudson, Madonna, and Cameron Diaz, Alex Rodriguez is now dating ex- wrestling diva, Torrie Wilson. Torrie who?
And perpetual playboy Derek Jeter? He was last seen with a Ralph Lauren model named Hannah Davis – after being dumped by actress Minka Kelly.
Uncle Fred Upton has the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee in DC. And now his niece, Kate, is on the powerful right arm of the Great Verlander. Move over Brangelina. . .
Hello Uplander.
Payne: Joe Jerk
Posted by hpayne on October 11, 2012
If the vice presidential debate had been a prize fight it would have been called after two rounds.
In opening the debate on Libya, moderator Martha Raddatz of ABC put front and center the explosive, unfolding, misleading administration response to the 9-11 terrorist attack on our Libyan embassy. That failure not only plays to a Republican strength, defense, but also forced Pinocchio Biden into fibbing about the Libyan ambassador’s rejected call for security – and the White House’s false claim that the attack was the result of a YouTube video. Ryan only had to note the obvious: “This was the anniversary of 9-11 and they did not give our ambassador a Marine attachment?”
That foreign policy incompetence was then bookended by Question #2: Why isn’t unemployment under 6 percent as the president had promised?
Game. Set. Match. And we were just 32 minutes in. But this being television, it’s in demeanor where Joe Blow really blew it.
The rest of the debate was a Biden clinic on how to be a jerk. Sneering, laughing, smirking, and interrupting, interrupting, interrupting – 82 times by one count – Biden lived up to the caricature of the unlikeable uncle at the Thanksgiving dinner table annoyed by his young, successful nephew.
“That’s a bunch of malarkey,” snarled Uncle Joe. “This is a bunch of stuff,” he huffed. “These guys bet against America all the time,” he demagogued. These dismissive huffs interspersed with rote references to “the wealthy” and “the super wealthy.”
Through this blather, Ryan remained composed, witty, bipartisan – and loaded with facts.
“Sometimes the words just don’t come out of your mouth the right way,” he said as Biden walked right into the trap of mentioning Romney’s admitted 47 percent gaffe. It was a Lloyd Benson “I knew Jack Kennedy” moment and it both disarmed Obama’s #2 and also humanized the smiling Ryan.
All this just 40 minutes into the debate. The rest was gravy with Ryan pressing on Obama’s $90 billion in “green pork,” violations of the Catholic Church’s First Amendment rights, and even a touching moment about naming his son “Bean” on a Raddatz question about abortion. All delivered with a confident smile and respect for his opponent.
Biden was the Grinch to the end – a fitting partner to a president whose disrespect for bipartisanship and divisive, thuggish campaign tactics have grown tiresome. The Ryan performance built on the first debate of a Romney-Ryan team – the CEO and the COO – that is serious about this country’s problems. Obama-Biden are just pols.
Payne: Debbie Debateitnot
Posted by hpayne on October 11, 2012
Think of how Romney-Obama presidential race turned around with one debate and now imagine that the Hoekstra-Stabenow race will have no debates at all. The stunning development today is a devastating blow to the Hoekstra campaign in what may have been his last chance to turn around a flagging campaign.
The Hoekstra camp is understandably frustrated that Stabenow stubbornly refused more debates ” or even to give network coverage to the two debates they could agree on. Meanwhile, other Senate races in Massachusetts, Ohio, and Florida are all engaged in vigorous TV debates.
But in the end, Hoekstra is the challenger that needs debate oxygen – not Stabenow.
The debate debacle is the latest setback in a bumbling Senate campaign that began with PeteSpendItNot tripping out of the blocks with a bomb of a Super Bowl ad. Since then he has failed to gain the traction or the money that he expected when he was reluctantly drafted into a key Senate race if Republicans have any hope of retaking the Senate (and exorcising Obamacare). He has also received little support from Romney who has concentrated on Ohio at Michigan’s expense.
Like Romney, Hoekstra has had to fight both an incumbent and a partisan press in Michigan that has given him little airtime – except to hammer him for his China ad gaffe. Thus the imperative of a debate – Hoekstra’s lone chance to talk directly to Michigan voters.
In a phone press conference Thursday after Stabenow pulled out of debate negotiations, Hoekstra lamented Senator Debbie’s refusal to agree to primetime, network TV. Instead, Stabenow insisted that a Detroit Athletic Club debate not get any coverage – and that a Grand Rapids rumble be relegated to public television.
“It doesn’t do a whole lot of good (to debate) if no one can see it,” lamented Hoekstra when asked if it is worth doing debates with little TV exposure.
He has a point, of course. Imagine if Romney and Obama had debated in Denver. . .with no TV.
It is hard to defeat a Democratic incumbent & Media without the boob tube (as painful as that is to admit as a newspaper guy). Print coverage won’t cut it. And ultimately, the fact that Michigan isn’t having the same TV debates as other states is an embarrassment.
“Michigan needs an independent debate entity,” says GOP consultant Paul Welday. Just like Massachusetts. Just like the presidential race.
Shame on Debbie Stabenow for refusing Michigan voters the chance to compare her and her challenger. And shame on Michigan’s MSM for not calling her on it. But in the end, this is Hoekstra’s problem. He needs debates to get into this race. He isn’t in a position to negotiate. Even if she proposes a debate in a closet, he’s gotta go.
Payne: Leno jokes, Detroit whines
Posted by hpayne on October 10, 2012
They say Detroit’s a tough town. So why is its skin so thin?
Jay Leno cracked a Detroit funny in his Monday monologue and Detroit leaders predictably became unhinged. “Well the police chief of Detroit was suspended after a female police officer said she had sex with him in exchange for a promotion,” Leno said. “And of course people are stunned: Detroit has a police department?”
Good, satirical stuff about America’s most dysfunctional city. But not to Thin-Skin-in-Chief Dan Gilbert who erupted at a public event Tuesday. “What can we do about people destroying the reputation of our city, locally and nationally?” said Quicken CEO Gilbert.
Memo to Gilbert: Detroit destroyed its own reputation with sky high crime, looming bankruptcy, and City Council clowns.
Leno is no LeBron James. He’s not a Gilbert employee and he certainly reflects the prevailing national view of the city. As Gilbert knows, Detroit has an image problem which is precisely why he is boldly spearheading downtown efforts to make Detroit a welcoming place again.
“We need to get Jay Leno here,” Gilbert continued. “I guess it’s a good thing that his ratings suck.”
Actually, they don’t. Leno is THE top-rated late night talk show. And when Detroit moves up in the ratings among America’s cites, it will stop being the butt of Leno jokes. Just like the improving Detroit Lions. When’s the last time you heard Leno joke about them? Exactly.
Payne: Kid Ryan, Union Joe
Posted by hpayne on October 9, 2012
Joe Biden has come to Detroit twice this campaign – both times to pay homage to the public school establishment. By contrast, when Paul Ryan came to town Monday night, he swing by the private, non-union Cornerstone Schools – an innovator in school choice for inner city Detroit children.
The Mainstream Media likes to paint the Romney-Ryan ticket as out-of-touch with regular folks – but the evidence on the ground contradicts the narrative.
When it comes to advancing Detroit’s schoolchildren, Ryan embraces innovation and reform – while Biden walks right by it to embrace party special interests.
Never mind that Cornerstone graduates 95 percent of its kids, while Detroit public schools squeeze out just 62 percent. Never mind that innovative charter and private schools give inner city, often minority, parents the same school choice that wealthier suburbanites enjoy. Never mind that a high school diploma and college placement is a gateway out of poverty.
Kid Rock introduced Ryan at an Oakland County campaign rally hours after Ryan’s Cornerstone visit. “Born Free” is Kid Rock’s anthem – and “Free to Choose” is Kid Ryan’s education theme. Democrats? They march to the union drummer.
Payne: Godbee, Clinton, and The War on Women
Posted by hpayne on October 8, 2012
This week Democratic Mayor Dave Bing pressured Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee to step down after the police chief was discoed to be in an unethical affair with a subordinate. This, just one month after Bing’s Democratic Party celebrated its commitment to women by inviting ex-President Bill Clinton – who famously had sexual relations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky – as its Charlotte convention keynote speaker.
How to resolve the glaring hypocrisy of these two affairs?
Politics. SImply put, Godbeee (and Bing) are not in jeopardy of losing their jobs to Republicans. But Bill Clinton was – and thus the entire Democratic Party abandoned principle in order to engage in an extraordinary War on Women in order to preserve a man as president.
Lewinsky was belittled as psychologically unbalanced. As a liar. A groupie. Only when she revealed that she had kept a semen-stained dress did the president of the United States admit he had lies about their affair. Then, the story changed. Then the MSM allowed that his unethical sex with a subordinate was “his private life.” Feminist icon Gloria Steinem famously wrote that Clinton deserved “one free grope” in a New York Times op-ed. Other victims – Paul Jones, Kathleen Willey – claimed sexual harassment. One Juanita Broaddrick claimed rape. The press ignored Broaddrick. Jones’ suit was settled for $850,000.
And Democrats have the nerve to declare themselves the Party of Women.
Godbee joins dozens of other executives – including Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and two newspapermen that I knew of during the Clinton scandal – who have been dismissed for improper executive conduct with subordinates because its is not their private life. It is Management 101.
Payne: Big Scalper’s GOP cronies
Posted by hpayne on October 7, 2012
President Obama has made his name as the most anti-business president in modern history, a regulatory busybody who has stuck his nose into everything from health care insurance to carbon dioxide regulation to bank loans. This micro-managing of the U.S. economy is a boon to lawmakers, of course, as they legislate for themselves new gate-keeping powers that only more lobbyist money can access. Meanwhile, the layers of regulation have stymied economic growth and energizing a grassroots Republican revolution against Big Government.
But some lawmakers still don’t get it. Take Michigan Republicans – please (as Henny Youngman might say).
First came Lt. Governor Brian Calley dictating what health insurers must cover. Now come Republican Obama clones in the Michigan House who have decided they know better how to run America’s ticketing industry than the ticketing industry. Like Obama gumming the health works with mandates, Republicans Rep. Kevin Cotter of Mount Pleasant, and Senator Joe Hume (Hamburg) have decided that intervening in the ticket market is a government priority. We’re not making this up.
The two GOPers have joined Democratic busybodies in sticking their noses into ticket minutiae from how tickets can be resold to the price for which a ticket can be resold. But the real prize in this regulatory overkill is paperless ticketing – a longtime target of the Big Scalper lobby.
Paperless ticketing is used in markets from the airline industry to Broadway shows to Detroit Pistons games as a convenience to consumers and for artists/venues/companies that want to reserve seats for fans, family, etc.. As proprietary products, of course, they come with restrictions – for example, if you buy an airline ticket, you are bound by its terms and conditions to pay a cancellation fee and not to resell to another customer. Similarly, paperless tix for concerts can’t be scalped – but must be used by the purchaser. And there’s the rub. Scalping is a big industry in this eBay/StubHub era – and the Scalper Lobby isn’t happy with the money it’s losing from paperless ticketing (even as it’s a small percentage of tickets sold).
So Republicans have decided to intervene in the ticket business on Big Scalper’s behalf.
The Cotter-Hume bill claims to be pro-consumer – a claim no less outrageous in principle than the Obama administration’s claim that it is regulating the health industry on the “consumer’s behalf.” In fact, if Michigan dictates to ticket services like Ticketmaster the terms and conditions of paperless conditions, watch ticket prices skyrocket.
Pro-consumer artists from Bruce Springsteen to No Doubt are long-time restrictive, paperless ticket advocates as a way to ensure their most rabid fans get affordable front-row seats. Eric Church, a musician who opposes the regulatory assault, notes that good seats would be out of reach of the average consumer if Big Scalper has its way. Without paperless ticketing, Church points out, “we would see 800-100 tickets immediately “for sale on StubHub for prices up to ten times face value.”
Bill supporters point to additional regulations that restrict Big Scalper technology like “ticket bots” that gobble up ticket issues in order to corner the market on resale. Not only does this lead down the slippery slope of pols dictating ticketing policy (what’s next, mandating seating prices?), but artists and venues like Auburn Hills Palace Entertainment aren’t impressed. Big Scalper knows that it has to give a little to take a lot.
Like Obama’s pro-Big Hospital-Big Pharma health reform, Michigan lawmakers have constructed a Trojan Horse for Big Scalper. Together with a StubHub front called the “Fan Freedom Project,” Big Scalper aims to require – by law in Michigan – that tickets suit its terms.
It’s a ticket to more meddling.
Payne: ‘This is a different Mitt Romney’
Posted by hpayne on October 3, 2012
“This is a different Mitt Romney,” said Jesse Jackson, leaning into me a half hour into the first presidential debate Wednesday night.
Well, it was different than the baby-eating Scrooge caricature that Obama & Media had been selling the last three weeks. But that caricature was never accurate, and so when Mitt Romney appeared in 60 million American living rooms – unfiltered – as his smart, competent, data-driven CEO self, he was bound to impress.
And impress he did.
Jackson and I were on a pre-debate panel organized by The Michigan Chronicle’s Bankole Thompson in downtown Detroit. The audience, a partisan Detroit crowd at the Seafood Market Restaurant, was revved for Obama. But as the debate unfolded, Jackson wasn’t the only Democrat who felt the earth moving under this campaign. At Fox 2 News at 10.30 PM, I joined Democratic consultants Debbie Dingell and Steve Hood who both acknowledged that this was Romney’s night.
But perhaps worse for Obama was where he goes next. His only weapon this campaign has been caricature. His opponent’s a One Percenter. He’s rich. He sends jobs to China. He doesn’t care about poor people. He’s rich. And now that the caricature has been punctured, he must run on his record. And that record is dreadful.
Romney took command of the debate by relentlessly citing the facts (facts a partisan MSM had buried of late) – middle class income down $4000 (eight percent) since Obama took office. Gas prices have doubled. The deficit has doubled. Tax dollars wasted on $90 billion subsidies to green failures like Solyndra, Fisker, and Ener1. Twenty-three million people out of work or not looking for work. A rise in food stamps from 32 million to 47 million. And so on.
Obama had nothing in response. (After the debate, the ever-loyal Juan Williams wondered why the president didn’t “attack him on Bain, attack him on the 47 percent, attack his tax returns.” But perhaps the president realized that such petty personal attacks would only have made the him look smaller.)
“Going forward with the status quo is not going to cut it,” said Romney, outlining the details of five-point plan after five-point plan from tax reform to health reform.
“I’m against giving tax breaks to companies to shift jobs overseas,” Obama shot back, trying to get back to his caricature fantasyland. Obamedia swallows that line whole on the campaign trail, but Romney isn’t the MSM.
“I’ve been in business 25 years and I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the GOP challenger.
Ouch. You could see Obama shrinking before your eyes.
Payne: Let Romney be Snyder
Posted by hpayne on October 2, 2012
After an extraordinary few weeks in which President Obama & Media detoured an American presidential campaign to an off-the-record video gaffe and the polling horse race, Mitt Romney will get his chance in this week’s debate to refocus the campaign on the serious economic issues that confront the country. Those issues – stagnant employment, 10-percent-of-GDP-deficits, rising energy prices, EPA mandates throwing thousands of miners out of work – have virtually disappeared from the headlines as the Obamedia followed the Democratic Party’s talk-about-anything-but-the-economy-stupid strategy.
Many pundits have swallowed the media narrative that the race is over and Romney can only change the inevitable if he throws the long-ball, shakes up the race with a debate bombshell, and becomes a right-wing Rottweiler. I beg to differ. If the lessons of Rick Snyder’s gubernatorial debate performance are any guide, America – like Michigan in 2010 – knows the stakes of this election despite the press chaff.
America yearns for competence. Let Romney be Romney. Or, perhaps, let Romney be Snyder.
Like Romney, Snyder was a businessman seeking higher office. And like Romney, he campaigned at a time when the economy in Michigan was on the mend – but was hampered by structural problems of over-regulation, spending, crony capitalism, and long-term liabilities. Granted, Snyder was not running against the incumbent that had delivered this mess – but he was campaigning against Jennifer Granholm’s policy clone, Virg Bernero.
Democratic Bernero tried to divert the debate to issues of Snyder’s wealth, his transfer of jobs to China, and the former Gateway exec’s alleged preference of Wall Street over Main Street – in short, the same playbook that Obama will bring to Wednesday’s debate in Denver. Snyder’s debate performance was a masterful display of a candidate sticking to what he knows, attacking where appropriate, and ultimately seizing the mantle of manager most competent for the job.
From his opening statement, Snyder looked the more serious man.
“Why are we here tonight?” began Snyder. “Because we all love Michigan. But our state is suffering. We’re in economic disaster. We have a broken government. It’s not the time to talk about the problems or dwell on blame. The key is: what’s the solution? It’s time to reinvent Michigan. I’ve got a 10-point plan that really focuses in on jobs, and then an attitude of action. I’m a proven job creator. I want to bring real world common sense solutions to Lansing.”
Bernero’s comeback was the Full Obama.
“I’m not a multi-millionaire like my opponent,” he said. And: “If you think the rules are working fine and the banks are treating people fairly, he’s your guy.” And: “He’s involved in economic development, yes, but it’s for himself and the folks at the top.”
Snyder’s response? “There he goes again,” the venture capitalist said with a smile.
“I mean, he’s being very consistent at least. I think if he says it enough times it will become true. I mean, these allegations are just incorrect,” he continued. And then he was right back on theme: “The real issue that matters here is we’ve lost a million jobs in Michigan. Let’s put Michiganders to work. I’m the proven job creator in this race.”
Snyder meet Romney. They faced similarly hostile media and Democratic environments, but Snyder’s Relentless Positive Action not only made him real to voters, it gave them what they crave most. They don’t want division.
They want leadership.
Payne: The Natalie Portman gap
Posted by hpayne on September 20, 2012
A picture of Hollywood actress Natalie Portman campaigning for Barack Obama anchored The Detroit News poll this week that finds President Obama with a commanding lead among Michigan voters. The post-Democratic Convention bounce is credited in part to Portman and a parade of women extolling Obama’s female-friendly policies – the poll found a gaping, 20-point advantage among women (married women favor Mitt Romney, but single women overwhelmingly favor Obama) who credit the president with his empathy for the middle class compared to a wealthy Romney who is out of touch with the working man.
But Natalie Portman tells a different story.
Worth $45 million, Portman represents an American elite class that has been showered with goodies from Democrats even as middle-class Americans have seen their income erode under Obama by $4000 – $2500 since the recession ended in 2009. While White House regulatory policies have strangled small business and put 1 in 5 Michiganians in poverty, the president has carved out special subsidies for politically-connected corporations (Ford, GE, Solyndra, Beacon Power, etc.) – and multi-millionaire greens like Portman who live Obama-approved lifestyles.
Gender gap? Let’s take a look at the Natalie Portman gap.
An advocate and owner for battery-powered vehicles, Portman has owned a Toyota Prius and $90,000 hybrid Mercedes S-Class – hybrid cars favored by upper-class buyers that respectively received $3500 and $1150 in federal tax breaks before the subsidies died in 2011 under those cruel, uncooperative House Republicans. The gravy train continues, however, for owners of even more expensive electric vehicles. Obama millionaire supporter Leo DiCaprio recently banked $7500 in taxpayer dollars for purchasing a $110,000 plug-in Fisker Karma. And millionaire Michigan Senator Carl Levin received $7500 for his $43,000 Chevy Volt.
Oh, the empathy. This redistribution of wealth to America’s rich even as middle class incomes have shrunk has been exempted from scrutiny by Obama’s MSM allies.
“I think Mitt Romney is for the wealthy,” Jordan Kemmerlin, 25, told The Detroit News. ” I don’t think he understands what the middle class stands for.”
And a millionaire ex-law school prof whose spokesperson is a $45 million Hollywood starlet in a hybrid Mercedes does? Ms. Kemmerlin, meet Natalie Portman.
Payne: The 9.4 Percent
Posted by hpayne on September 19, 2012
This should be Michigan’s time. The target of Obama manufacturing policy (and six years of similar Granholm stimulus before it) including the auto bailout, tens of millions in federal green investment, and millions more in stimulus infrastructure spending, Michigan should be leading this economic recovery with a roar. With their soaring sales numbers, the Big Three are evidence that Obama is transforming America, yes?
No.
Michigan was shocked again this week with its fourth straight month of rising unemployment. At 9.4 percent, Michigan is going backwards in this recovery with unemployment higher in August than January’s 9 percent. What happened?
Obamanomics happened. Michigan economists agree that – despite the much-ballyhooed, targeted favors of the White House, the larger Michigan economy is suffering from the same malaise as the other 49 states: Washington overregulation and policy uncertainty.
“One month of rising unemployment is an anomaly, four months is a trend,” says Mackinac Center economist James Hohman who looked at today’s bleak numbers that showed manufacturing, construction, retail trade, and government job numbers all down. “These numbers should be of concern to policymakers.”
Hohman confirms the auto industry’s health is a bright spot – together with Governor Snyder’s firm fiscal reforms . But he also notes that Obama is stuck in the past – today autos make up just 3.57 percent of Michigan manufacturing jobs, less, in fact, than Indiana. What Obama should be doing is not trying to dictate the future from Washington – but unleashing markets to show the way.
Unlike the coal industry or the medical devices industry – both of which are being hammered by Obama’s global warming and Obamacare policies – neither Hohman nor economist Pat Anderson, CEO of Anderson Economic Group in Lansing, can point to one sector of Michigan’s economy that illustrates its ills.
Instead, they both point to a cocktail of Washington-driven problems that have made it expensive for ALL businesses to hire new workers.
Anderson cites the toll taken by Obamacare’s unknown costs, the taxes imposed for the state’s extended unemployment benefits (the so-called solvency tax), and banking regulations that have held back capital from business expansion.
“Across all industries the #1 reason for persistent unemployment is Washington has created huge uncertainty about hiring new workers,” says Anderson. He adds that Michigan businessmen scoff at the media’s – and the Federal Reserve’s – obsession with lowering interest rates as some kind of silver bullet.
“Business people just shrug and laugh at the low rates because the federal Treasury Department is punishing banks for making new investments,” he says. “Small business cannot borrow money from banks.”
This conforms with what MIView has heard from businessmen since 2009 – that Obama’s anti-business policies have buried job creators in added costs while discouraging new cash investment. America grows when markets pick the winners, not government.
Washington’s pet state of Michigan is the best evidence of that.
Payne: UMW is dead. UAW is alive.
Posted by hpayne on September 18, 2012
“The Navy SEALs shot Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and (the EPA’s) Lisa Jackson shot us in Washington,” United Mine Worker President Cecil Roberts told a West Virginia radio show in April.
How’s that for a bump sticker, Vice President Biden?
The Obama campaign has made “Bin Laden is dead. GM is alive” its campaign motto, highlighting the auto bailout as its major first term economic achievement. But the same administration’s destruction of hundreds of UMW jobs across the eastern coal belt exposes the lie of a White House that cares about the working man.
What is now clear is that UAW Bailout was a politically-motivated rescue of a key Democratic contributor in a two key electoral swing states (Michigan and Ohio) over an industry that Barack Obama has long wanted to transform in his green image.
By contrast, the zealot-in-chief has no use for coal – and therefore no use for its workers or less significant electoral states like West Virginia and Kentucky. As we have covered on MIView (and as I report in The Weekly Standard this week), hundreds of UMW workers have been sacrificed on the altar of Obama’s Global Warming Church.
The result of this assault is that, unlike UAW President Bob King, UMW President Roberts was nowhere to be found at the Democratic Convention. In fact, the UMW is not endorsing Obama this year (after knighting him in 2008) – the first time the UMW hasn’t endorsed for president in memory.
The White House war on his workers continued this week as Alpha Natural Resources laid off another 1,20 coal workers because, lamented Alpha CEO Kevin Crutchfield, of “a regulatory environment that’s aggressively aimed at constraining the use of coal.”
Despite this – and other testimonials from the coal industry of the direct impact of the Obama EPA’s War on Coal – Phyllis Cuttino, director of Pew’s Clean Energy Program and an advocate for Obama’s green policies, told The Detroit News editorial board that the job losses are related to natural gas competition and are “not coming from EPA regulations.”
Huh? The hostility of the White House and activist groups like Pew to one America’s most abundant energy resources begs the question: When did Greens shift from making sure energy sources were clean and safe to targeting energy sources for elimination?
Having succeeded – together with the relentless advance of technology – in reducing utility emissions, environmentalists don’t know when to declare victory. Instead, they have now become obsessed with DEFEAT. That is, the defeat of a cheap, efficient, American energy resource that employs tens of thousands of Americans.
So much for liberal compassion.