Discussion on:

Romney criticized over Jeep production debacle

Romney even refuses to admit he was wrong in this case and ignores questions about it. The more I know about him the more I believe it's all about getting elected and he'll say and do whatever he has to do to that end. I don't think he's very concerned with governing afterwards if he is elected. I'm not that happy with Obama but at least I know what to expect with him. I have no clue what Romney would do and I'm not willing to just trust him.

First of all - Obama lied to Janesville employees when he 'essentially' said if they voted for him, the GM plant would not close. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TsV_Z0NPCA
I think the Romney quote is an oversimplification of the issue. Most people can't think big enough to realize that many of those jobs were lost in the recession. SOMETHING, I would hazard a guess as it being the Obama administration, is causing 'new' jobs to be created (as Obama sees it) or old jobs to be re-created (as Romney sees it) in China.
It's really philosophy that decides where you fall. Are they new jobs? Or are they old jobs that should have been 'reestablished' in the US?

I think it doesn't matter which side anyone falls, but everyone should be asking themselves, "What can we do to ensure these jobs are created in the US instead of China?" Instead, everyone is picking sides on a particular quote where neither side is exactly wrong. Short-sighted, poorly informed public. tsk tsk tsk. You get the government you deserve.

This is not an "either the U.S. or China" situation. The factories in the U.S. build vehicles for purchase in the U.S. The new factories in China build vehicles to be sold in China. The facts here have nothing to do with philosophy. It may be possible to build the Jeeps in the U.S. and export them to China, but that depends on the Chinese government allowing it, and it also might make the vehicles too expensive to sell in that market.

Regardless, the facilities in China have nothing to do with the facilities here.

All Jeeps are made in the US now, and some are exported to Asia. If they're shipping all the parts over there anyways, where's the cost savings? There are currently import tariffs on large engine imports into China - but is that enough of a reason to manufacture there? Especially since the 'new Jeep' referred to sounds like it wouldn't have the large engine to be subject to the tariff. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-21/fiat-says-china-may-build-all-jeep-models-as-suv-demand-climbs.html

Regardless, manufacturing occurs in Asia and those products are shipped back to the US ALL THE TIME. With the job climate the way it is, ANYTHING that spurs job creation outside of the US needs to be thoroughly examined - not 'poo poo'd.

The production in China is because Chrysler/Jeep sees significant growth in car sales in China - and wants (sensibly) to build closer to the market. These are not Chinese workers being given US jobs to produce for US consumption. Jeep has increased and plans to continue increasing US jobs for cars to sell in the North American market (and maybe Latin American - I don't know). The point is, the implication that this is about losing US jobs is totally false - and its obvious the Romney camp, like everyone else except perhaps the uninformed voters they are trying to trick, knows that.

The Janesville plant was closed before Obama took office! It closed Dec. 23, 2008. http://factcheck.org/2012/10/whoppers-of-2012-final-edition/

Also in perspective, Romney's quote is that "All" jeeps would be made in China.

Yes the plant slowed production in December.

When was Obama running for office?

When did he make the promises?

When was he elected?

When did the plant close? May 2009. It stopped producing SUVs in December 2008. It still built Isuzu trucks until being put in a "standby capacity" in May 2009.

Knowing the plant was scheduled for a shutdown at years end candidate Obama promised to support having GM retool the plant to build other vehicles. No such government effort ever happened.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/janesville-gm-plant-closed-2009-after-obama-promised-save-it

I appreciate this article, even though I really don't think it belongs on "SmartPlanet." This is supposed to be a forum for environmental issues and technologies, not for political grandstanding.

I despise both candidates and will not be voting for either. Nonetheless, I think that the photo of Romney with a Pinocchio nose is politically charged, highly biased, and totally unwarranted.

You don't think pointing out that someone running for our highest office is out and out lying is unwarranted?
Amazing.

When every time I point out an Obama lie, like Benghazi, I get called a racist by some nit wit.

Try reading my comment again without your own biases showing through. I said that I appreciated the article, but that the Pinocchio nose was unwarranted.

It was directed at harrim47

I get burned up that challenging Romneys statements is ok ( as it should be) ,but when people ask for a little civility, like no nose games, they are met with a response like Hs.

Yet if one dares to challenge the president it is often met with furious outrage and cries of racism.

The editorial distortion of the photo is in very bad taste, and a violation of the journalistic ethics I learned in college. Why can't a CBS product just present facts / opinions without distortion and without attacks? Is this such a hard ethical issue? What ever happened to impartially presenting facts? And whatever happened to editorial oversight?

The photoshopped nose may be in bad taste BUT I don't see distortion the way Fox News does. When Romney blatantly lies during a debate and the moderator does quick fact-check Fox news takes exception to it. So Romney can lie through his teeth to suit the moment but a news channel can't call him on that? I fail to understand the logic !

Are you seriously insinuating that Obama was being truthful when he said that he called the Benghazi attacks an act of terrorism in his Rose Garden address the day after the attack?

Any reasonable person who heard his speech or read the transcript knows that that is simply not true. He did utter the words "act of terrorism" but that was not in regard to the Benghazi attack but rather just a general reference after mentioning 9/11, etc.

If he truly felt that the Benghazi attacks were acts of terror, then why did he and his administration claim for the next two weeks that the attack was a spontaneous protest in reaction to the anti-Islam youtube video?

If you want to support Obama that is fine, but can't you at least be honest and admit that he lied during the debate about claiming that he called the Benghazi attack an act of terror the day after it occurred and that Romney had it right? The moderator interjecting herself at that point was inappropriate and biased, and Fox taking exception to it is what real journalists are supposed to do. They are supposed to report facts and not their own opinions. Maybe you've forgotten that after watching too much MSNBC.

SmartPlanet is now openly a Democrat organ. I mean we always knew it was, but at least now they are shedding their pretense of being anything otherwise. I appreciate the honesty.

Smart Planet and CBS are in cahoots with the democratic party, and would do all things possible to have Obama re-elected.

CBS is acting like a division of the democratic party, with Smart Planet being a sub-divison of the democratic party.

...do you not remember how they threw Dan Rather under the bus when he got caught pretending to be a journalist? Just remember that he was already a 1%-er and had a pretty good severance package.

a supposed "journalist" was caught falsifying documents, and reports, which is a big NO-NO in anybody's book.

When the whole world was talking about how corrupt Rather had been, CBS could not cover for him any more.

...even though they might possibly had been not "real".

And remember that Dan tried to blame is staff; after all, all he really does is read the stuff, or so he said at the time.

At least we discovered what the threshold for CBS was; a pretty low bar by any standard. As long as the story fits the narrative, it's fit to print as-is.

Then it would be called Stupid Planet... If you don't like it, leave. No one will miss you.

But fortunately, articles like this expose it for what it is, and destroys credibility. I like that.

While trying to attack a political candidate, SmartPlanet has lost the confidence of many members and watchers. Now that SmartPlanet is getting in on the politics it no longer has credibility for their stories. They are obviously not a journalistic organization but rather a campaign for their own opinions.

Regardless of Mr. Romney's defense of the veracity of his ad, it's not the whole truth. While it's factually true, it's only partially true, particularly because of the implication of that partial truth-telling. In essence, the implication becomes a lie in itself.

For those of us who don't find Mr. Romney all that attractive as a candidate, the image with the article is funny. I do agree with the criticism, though - the picture is unnecessary to convey the point of the piece. And the actual article itself is an awkward fit here. Perhaps next time...

GM has plants in India and builds cars here. So does Ford. We have differential import duty structure for components and completely built vehicles. May be China does too! So what is wrong if GM or Chrysler puts up a plant in China and creates jobs there to supply the local markets at competitive price structure? It makes more sense logistically and economically. May be the situation is that it would be impossible to sell US built Jeeps on these grounds.

permeates everything in our lives, so no forum should be tagged as someone are suggesting 'party' organ. It affects everybody's life and if we don't get concerned about it, somebody else will make decisions on your behalf.
I don't see a problem with this kind of article, as long as they reflect the truth, and opinions a part, I've heard Mr Romney changing his mind a number of times in very relevant subjects. Please keep the good job.

Exactly how many SmartPlanet articles have we seen over the last 4 years on Obama's whoppers?

Over the past couple of months, there have been major climate stories that have been completely overlooked by any of the SmartPlanet columnists because they go against the dogma here.

For example, nobody pointed out a paper published in the Nature Climate Change journal that tree ring data indicates that the climate during Roman times is at least as hot as it is today due to increased solar energy from orbital forcing, and that "The forcing is substantial over the past 2,000 years, up to four times as large as the 1.6Wm2 net anthropogenic forcing since 1750." ( http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1589.html ).

Nor did anybody point out data published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (part of the federal government) that U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions in early 2012 are the lowest since 1992, largely because of the move in electricity production from burning coal to burning natural gas (http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=7350 ).

So, yes, SmartPlanet has a definite agenda. Nobody should look for unbiased reporting from the columnists here.

The report in Nature Climate Change was for one specific tree ring set in northern Norway. It's probably stretching the evidence too far to try an apply this to the Northern Hemisphere. There's an interesting discussion of the paper by Michael Mann here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/07/tree-rings-and-climate-some-recent-developments/

CO2 emissions have dropped significantly due to the ongoing switch from coal to natural gas. But in the long run that won't be enough. Unless we reduce our net emissions of CO2 to zero the problem of global warming just keeps getting worse.

Wow! What a surprise. The boy from the fantasy land party lied AGAIN. That's been the crybaby Republican Party's program all election.

Please read this article to find out more, and what you can do about it:
http://www.naturalnews.com/037508_rigged_awakening_consciousness.html

Think about how long Obama's nose would be regarding the Benghazi terror attacks, and about how much Obama and his administration have lied to the American people. If lying were to make one's nose grow, Obama's nose would be a few miles long, and he wouldn't even be able to get around dragging that thing.

Then, when it comes to the economy, the lies would have made his nose stretch to make it around the world.

Regarding Romney and the Jeep production going to China, there could be a lot of truth to Chrysler/Fiat moving production to China.

First, they come up with the excuse that, it would be for sales in China and other Asian countries. Then, when production has ramped up to cover the Asian market, and the facilities have been upgraded to produce for other markets, you can bet that, all production of Jeeps would be moved to China. Why wouldn't they if there would be a huge advantage for producing them at much lower costs in China? It's the give then an inch, and they'll stretch it into a mile argument. If it can happen, it will, especially when there is an awful amount of money to save.

which means that, they have no obligations to keep any production in America for Chrysler vehicles, including Jeeps. Once the election is over, the truth will come out, and Chrysler and Fiat will not have to hold back on their messages regarding production going overseas. The denials are, very likely, at the urging of the Obama administration, which would get hit by the truth if the true intentions of Fiat were to be known before the election. Can't have any negative news come out before the election, even if the negatives are found to be truthful.

... since their merger with Daimler-Benz back in 1998.

Why am I subjected to even more political discussion (and bias) in this forum?? I don't read SmartPlanet to learn about politics or an author's view of the candidates. Please get back to the focus of this newsletter!!!!

How dare you talk about Romney lies and not mention the cover up that has taken place in Benghazi. I remember Obama begging for anybody to buy Chrysler when the Automakers were in trouble. Americans died in Benghazi. One more political comment by you and I'm out of here.

They are still sorting facts from rumors in the case of Bengazi attack. We really won't know what all happened for months. While the deaths in Bengazi are serious the invasion of the US embassy in Cairo is also a serious breach like the one in 1979 in Iran.

It used to be that US campaign politics stayed within the US borders. Both parties would have presented a united front in support of the country and waited until the crisis abated before publicly criticizing the administration. To publicly criticize the president regarding an international crisis weakens the stature of the US in other countries.

up the wrong tree with your accusations.

Obama is full of himself, and it's all about him, and the weakness he projects, in the country and around the world, is worrisome to all that understand international relations, but, not worrisome to the terrorists and America's enemies. America's enemies welcome the weakness the Obama projects, and ,they're taking advantage of that weakness. We may be leaving Iraq and Afghanistan, but, Al-Qaeda is already moving in to fill that vacuum. The attacks in Egypt and in Libya, are just more indications of the favor that Obama is doing for the terrorists and other enemies of our country.

Now, even our military is being downsized, and our enemies around the world couldn't be more pleased.

Obama has caused more damage to our foreign relations than all other presidents combined.

Get rid of the dummy! Vote him out before he causes any more harm to the country.

When you talk about America's enemies, have you given a thought to why they are your enemies ? Apart from China and Pakistan - with whom we have border disputes - we have NO enemies in the world.

Accordingly to you artificially created and installed feudal systems in the middle east are acceptable so long as they continue to supply what US wants. But on the other hand popular public revolt aginst an oppressive regime - as happened in Iran - that overthrew the US puppet Shah - and brought in theological regime is not acceptable. Iraq allowed far more freedom to their population than most current governments in other middle east countries. They had no WMDs either. Fortunately world opinion counts for at least something in the Us otherwise I would not be surprised if the entire population of Iraq is moved to some arid and barren reservation to take over the country as the 51st state of the US.

Those regimes in the middle-east have been the enemies of the U.S. and all western governments, for over 1400 years, and it's nothing to do with our failures or our tactics or our desire for oil. They are our enemies because they make themselves our enemies. They make themselve our enemies when they want to destroy our way of life, including our religions and cultures. Until we, the west, submit to Islam, we will continue being the enemy to those regimes in the middle-east.

Get YOUR facts straight!!!!!

The military needs to be downsized! The US spends more on the military than the next 14 countries combined and for 2012 according to the SIPRI Yearbook the US is spending $711 billion and #2, China is spending $143 billion. We could cut the military by half and still spend more than twice as much as China.

we have to maintain the largest military in the world. It's that simple.

Unfortunately, we are the "world's policeman", like it or not, and therefore, it's going to cost a lot more than most would wish.

The Europeans happily surrendered that role to us so they could afford their lavish welfare state. The Progressives view them with such envy. We've been the globalcop for over a half century. It's someone else's turn. I'm sure that China will be more than happy to take up the slack from us now.

Besides, soon our interest payments to them will eclipse what we spend on defense. They'll be able to afford it.

Is because the US has been footing the bill for their defense since WW II ended.

The UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the rest of them with almost non-existent military would have been buried under a mountain of debt decades ago if they had to pay for their social welfare states and their own national defense.

As is their welfare/nanny state policies are still crushing them, even with US defense subsidies.

...is that it causes people to no longer care what happens outside their borders. When it's a decision between keeping or expanding your goodies or doing good elsewhere, socialists will always pick the former.

Remember when there was genocide in Europe in the '90s, it was the US that responded; not the Europeans who just sat and watched it happen only a few miles away.

that terrorist cells are ready and waiting for absolutely any event of even minor religious significance to cloak their action behind it ? The first incident in Egypt may have been due to the uTube video clip but what followed may have been just this kind of reaction.

One more nasty story like this and I'm opting out of SmartPlanet. This used to be a tech/innovation site and now it has become nothing more than a far leftist screed. Cut the cr@p and cut the disparaging PS images.

Isn't funny how none of them energetically criticized him before? Why now? What does it actually achieve? Boy, does our system need a reboot or what!