PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Don't Stretch the Truth
by Sudhama Ranganathan Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2012 at 1:21 PM
uconnharassment@gmail.com (email address validated)

Times have been tough all around for Americans so it's no surprise this year's elections will be all about what we've been going through as a nation. Each side will attempt to frame the current economic conditions as manifestations of poor leadership on the part of their rivals and their rivals' parties. We will hear all the usual election year rancor about how each has done their part to help ease the suffering of the nation. Conversely, we'll be bombarded with talk of how the other party not only contributed to, but caused the economic dilemma we find ourselves trying to dig out of - at times seemingly with no help from our elected officials.

The previous administration mislead us about one of the worst things leaders can mislead us about. They sold us on trumped up information about the false notion we needed to send American men and women to die in an invasion of Iraq. The history is well known and there's no need to retrace all of it right now, but what we needed most at that time, what we as a nation yearned for, was to be told the truth and to be shown a way out of the darkness that had befallen us during the tenure of the Bush administration - especially the last term.

There were the two wars, the economy and the invasion of privacy which collectively caused us all to feel like something had happened underneath our feet we couldn't completely define outside of the fact we knew it was bad and we had been lied to about it. It almost felt as though we had just realized our parents had been lying to us our whole lives about things so great we weren't sure what was real and what was fake anymore.

We chose a new direction in the hopes it would lead us to a place that would enable us to pull out of the economic straights, pull out of the wars and pull out of the clouds that had seemed to envelope us all in order to find the prospect of a new direction and hope. We selected a candidate a majority of us became convinced held that prospect open for the country. Like family members that had just experienced a terrible loss, we needed to heal. America had every right to be angry about what had just happened.

Things never are as good as advertised most of the time and that's the way the new administration turned out, so far anyway. To be fair, though, their tenure started with the barrage of unfair negativity thrown at them from the other side of the isle and those ideologically opposed to what they stood for – in more ways than one. We saw everything from racism uncovered from within the ranks of the opposing party with emails illustrating the White House lawn being turned into a watermelon patch in place of easter eggs for an easter egg hunt and the “historical keepsake” email with portraits of all the presidents shown except that of president Obama's with his replaced by a black background with a pair of eyes, to the not as publicized, skepticism regarding actually proposed policies. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDzQQTcpWyo) (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/16/tennessee-gop-staffer-ema_n_216085.html)

Pundits from the other side famously announced from the beginning they hoped he failed. He was criticized as being a socialist intent on increasing the amount of people on welfare to being in favor of killing business in America and ruining the nation in general. That kind of rhetoric was all lies based on nothing more than hatred and a visceral reaction to the person as opposed to anything he intended to accomplish politically or his political views.

However, the president did himself no favors when he turned on many of the things he once claimed he supported. He promised to follow the Bush timeline with regards to puling out of Iraq. When the time drew near he actually attempted to keep our men and women there longer by trying to extend the timeline through negotiations with the Iraqi government.

Fortunately he failed at that. He stated he would find the people responsible for 9-11 in Afghanistan to finish the mission, and then bring our troops home. He found Bin Laden, but then decided to keep troops there until at least 2014.

He has turned on his promises to cut back intrusions into the private lives of Americans – at least so far. In many ways the shift away from the Bush administration never materialized with the election of the current president, save with the change in our image abroad. He did laudably manage to pass sweeping healthcare reform putting us on track with all the other industrialized nations of the world that have been farther ahead of us in being able to provide healthcare for their people. But in order to do so he squandered time that could have been spent on things like passing bills to get Americans back to work which could have been pushed simultaneously.

His record has been hit and miss at best thus far and nothing to write home about – not that his predecessor was any better. In fact his predecessor ended up being the kind of leader you just kind of left out of your correspondences by the end of his term. Nevertheless, we are at the point of being ready to choose again. The GOP establishment pick is Mitt Romney and he has the best chance of facing president Obama in the general elections out of all the GOP contenders left in the primaries. Sans an independent or third party run, that is.

Whomever he faces in the fall, what we need right now more than ever is honesty. We need people that will be sincere and that we feel we can trust when they talk to us; Democrat or Republican. We need straight talkers. We thought we had that in the current president until he seemed to let us down in so many areas. Right now he has been on the road campaigning and his track record has already been turning up dodgy.

One of the things he has touted most has been the bailout of the Big Three automakers passed under his tenure. He has been hyping the measure as something of a saving grace and in some ways it has been. However, he has stretched the truth in many areas.

For example, as the Washington Post points out, he's claimed, “Chrysler has repaid every dime and more of what it owes American taxpayers for their support during my presidency — and it repaid that money six years ahead of schedule. And this week, we reached a deal to sell our remaining stake. That means soon, Chrysler will be 100 percent in private hands.”

But that isn't 100% accurate. As the paper points out, “According to the White House, Obama is counting only the $8.5 billion loan that he made to Chrysler, not the $4 billion that President George W. Bush extended in his last month in office. However, Obama was not a disinterested observer at the time. According to The Washington Post article on the Bush loan, the incoming president called Bush’s action a 'necessary step . . . to help avoid a collapse of our auto industry that would have had devastating consequences for our economy and our workers.'

“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.” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/president-obamas-phony-accounting-on-the-auto-industry-bailout/2011/06/06/AG3nefKH_blog.html)

There is no current payment plan for Chrysler that covers just the Obama plan first and then one that will apply to the Bush loan. They were loaned $12.5 billion by US taxpayers period. We need more honesty than that from the man we elected to bring hope and change regarding the direction we were headed in under the Bush administration.

Again as the Washington Post points out the president has said, “GM plans to hire back all of the workers they had to lay off during the recession.” But upon closer scrutiny, “This is another impressive-sounding but misleading figure. In the five years since 2006, General Motors announced that it would reduce its workforce by nearly 68,000 hourly and salary workers, creating a much smaller company. Those are the figures that generated the headlines.

“Obama is only talking about a sliver of workers — the 9,600 workers who were laid off in the fourth quarter of 2008. About 4,100 were sent home for a few weeks. Another 5,500 were put on indefinite leave, meaning there were no jobs at the time for them. All but 1,000 have returned to work, and the rest should be back at work by year’s end, according to GM spokesman Greg A. Martin.” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/president-obamas-phony-accounting-on-the-auto-industry-bailout/2011/06/06/AG3nefKH_blog.html) Again huge holes in what adds up to fuzzy math at best on that claim.

There is much to be proud of with his effort to bail out the auto industry. Why stretch the truth and lie? Hope? Change? It would be much better if he just talks about what went right and not add things to the record that can easily be picked apart upon examination and used as sound bites against whatever positive steps there may have been.

What the opponent he will face in the fall has on their side is, depending on who it is, they won't have the baggage to try and explain away with regards to contributing to our current predicament. What the president has on his side is he has the power to change much of what his opponents could lambast him for by then. But he has to do it to prove he is capable of more than printing money.

Let's hope we see facts and spirited debates of those facts, as opposed to the sorts of stuff we saw in 2010, which although the potential for new parties was good while it lasted, consisted of far too many lies and exaggerations. We don't need any more divisiveness, just honesty. That would be a nice change. One can only hope. Sadly, we have not seen much of either as of yet.

To read about my inspiration for this article go to www.lawsuitagainstuconn.com.

www.lawsuitagainstuconn.com