Members of the United Auto Workers expressed extreme displeasure with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's comment that rather than bail out the auto industry, "we should have let Detroit go bankrupt." They said that Romney doesn't understand that the bailout didn't just save companies and jobs, it saved careers and families. They went further to say that when conservatives like Romney attack unions, what they are really attacking are working people.

The full press release:

UAW members reacted strongly to Mitt Romney's claim that "we should have let Detroit go bankrupt," when the economy and the auto industry were about to collapse.

"He's trying to rewrite history and attack President Obama and the UAW for successfully saving the auto industry," said UAW President Bob King. "He is misleading voters about the president's bold and decisive rescue of the auto industry and about sacrifices made by workers. But voters deserve the truth."

Even prior to the emergency rescue loans, UAW members made deep sacrifices beginning in 2005 to save the company, giving up pay increases, overtime pay, holidays, agreeing to a reduced pay and benefit structure for new hires, and other concessions. President Obama demanded additional concessions and shared sacrifice from both labor and management in exchange for the loans.

In return, America's carmakers retooled to create the energy-efficient cars of the future and repaid their outstanding loans years ahead of schedule.

Rescuing the auto industry saved more than 1.4 million jobs up and down the supply chain.

"There's not a person in Michigan who doesn't have a sister or brother or cousin or friend who is tied to the auto industry," said Stacie Steward, a UAW Local 1700 member and an electrician from Chrysler's Sterling Heights Assembly Plant (SHAP) in Sterling Heights, Mich. "Every Michigan citizen should be appalled by what Mitt Romney said."
"It's an attack on American workers," said Jeff Klayo, also of Local 1700 and from SHAP, which was scheduled to close before Chrysler received the loans. "We're out there trying to get the American dream. We're trying to keep our jobs, for a good wage for our family, put food on our table, pay our taxes, continue to work for the company and get the rewards.

"If the company's successful, we can be successful. If the company takes a downturn, we take a downturn with it," he added.

"The president's rescue loans helped the auto industry survive the darkest hour of its history and return to thriving operations today," said King. "These workers from SHAP are evidence. They, along with hundreds of thousands other workers who depend on the auto industry for jobs, were facing a very uncertain future, but today, they are making the Chrysler 200, one of Detroit's new, hot-selling models. UAW members completed negotiations with the domestic automakers this fall with a strategy to make the company successful and to share in its success. And that strategy paid off."

"Americans deserve to know the truth," King added. "The emergency loans worked. GM is once again the world's top carmaker. Its 2011 profit was its largest ever. The auto industry added more than 200,000 jobs in the last two-and-a-half years, and 2011 was the strongest year of industry job growth since 1994. Demand for their cars is going up, so GM, Ford and Chrysler are starting to run three production shifts a day at many plants. Added shifts and new facilities mean jobs for thousands more workers in Michigan, Ohio and other places across the country."

Romney seems to care more about appeasing his allies in the business community than helping out actual working Americans. Good to see that working Americans are fighting back against the lies that Romney and other conservatives are spreading about them.

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Credit: Vanity Fair

President Barack Obama took an oath to "promote the general Welfare." Venture capitalist Mitt Romney pledged to maximize shareholder value. Unfortunately, candidate Mitt Romney is pretending the two are the same thing. As Romney repeatedly insisted this month, President Obama's rescue of the U.S. auto industry and over one million jobs associated with it is little different than his own Bain Capital days of slashing jobs - and extracting profits.

Romney introduced the new defense of his "vulture capital" past during the December 15 GOP debate in Sioux City, Iowa. There, he took Obama to task for layoffs at General Motors as part of the successful auto bailout Romney opposed:

"In the real world, some things don't make it, and I believe I've learned from my successes and my failures. The President, I'll look at and say: 'Mr. President, how did you do when you were running General Motors as the president, took it over? Gee, you closed down factories. You closed down dealerships. And he'll say: 'Well, I did that to save the business.' Same thing with us, Mr. President. We did our very best to make those businesses succeed. I'm pleased that they did, and I've learned the lessons of how the economy works. This president doesn't know how the economy works. I believe to create jobs, it helps to have created jobs."

Days later, the son of American Motors magnate George Romney repeated the talking point:

"The president has had one experience overseeing an enterprise -- a couple of enterprises, General Motors and Chrysler," Romney told Fox News in an interview that aired Sunday. "What did he do? He closed factories. He laid off people. He didn't do it personally, but his people did. Why did he do that? Because he wanted to save the enterprise, and he wants to make it profitable so it can survive."

No. In 2009, President Obama was trying to save an entire industry, one at the very heart of American manufacturing. In so doing, Obama likely helped save the United States from a second Great Depression.

As McClatchy reported this week:

U.S. and foreign automakers are poised to add nearly 167,000 U.S. jobs by the end of 2015, according to the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. That breaks down to 30,000 hourly and salaried workers at the Big Three U.S. automakers, 17,000 jobs at foreign automakers and about 120,000 auto-supply sector jobs...

Most analysts say the industry's growing stability is sweet vindication for the federal government's $80 billion bailout, which allowed General Motors and Chrysler to reorganize. The Center for Automotive Research estimates that the bailouts saved more than 1.1 million jobs in 2009 and another 314,000 in 2010, while avoiding personal income losses of more than $96 billion.

(The November 2010 CAR analysis is available here.)

And over time, the federal tax revenue from that personal and business income will more than offset any potential losses the government might sustain from its future sales of GM stock. As USA Today noted in June in admitting the success of the Obama administration's bailout of Detroit:

That loss is nothing to sneeze at. It's a heck of a lot better, though, than the $108 billion to $156 billion the government would have lost over three years if it hadn't intervened, according to the Center for Automotive Research, a Detroit-based think tank. Those losses would have come in the form of lower tax receipts and higher spending for pension guarantees, jobless pay and other benefits.

As for Mitt Romney, who famously insisted in November 2008 that Washington should "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt," USA Today rightly pointed out, "On what planet would the automakers have found private lenders willing to provide tens of billions of dollars in needed bankruptcy financing at the height of a financial panic?"

In a nutshell, President Obama's tough actions, including painful layoffs and pay cuts for auto workers, saved American jobs, American taxpayer revenue and perhaps the American economy. But for Mitt Romney and his Bain colleagues, the benefits often went into their pockets alone.

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Credit: New York Times

Among the more comical episodes of the 2008 presidential campaign was the failed effort by Republicans to paint Barack Obama as "elitist" and "out of touch." Sadly for the GOP, that attack backfired hilariously when John McCain couldn't remember how many homes he owned, said a $5 million income made someone rich, and advocated tax cuts that would save he and his heiress wife hundreds of thousands annually.

Now three years later, Mitt Romney appears poised to fall into the same gold-plated trap. After decrying President Obama for referring to the sluggish economic recovery as a "bump in the road," GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney joked with jobless Floridians that "I'm also unemployed." Of course, one feeble attempt at humor doesn't make Mitt out of touch; that takes a lifetime of experience.

Here are just some of the ways you know Mitt Romney is out of touch:

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when the $250,000,000 son of an auto magnate jokes about being unemployed.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he stages a photo-op with an unemployed single mom in Michigan - who also happens to be the mother of a paid campaign staffer.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he won't release his tax returns during any of his runs for office.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when decides he will not seek donations to repay $45 million in personal loans he made to his failed presidential bid -- "the biggest ever made by a candidate in a primary campaign."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he responds "I'm not concerned about the voters" after Tim Russert asked him "why not tell the voters of Florida and across the country how much of your own wealth you're spending?"

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when his wife Ann jokes that "Mitt doesn't even know the answer to that" when asked how many dressage horses she owns.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he sells two of his four multimillion dollars mansions because he and his wife are, according to an aide, "downsizing and simplifying."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he apparently forgets which state he lives in, votes in and pays taxes in - twice.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he says Democrats are "the party of the monarchists."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he claims his five sons serve their nation by "helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he avoided combat duty in the rice fields of Vietnam by getting multiple deferments to perform his Mormon mission in the vineyards of France.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he was raised in upscale Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, claims he's just "a guy from Detroit" and then authors an op-ed piece titled, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when calls for state pension funds to divest their holdings in companies doing business in Iran, only to learn that his former employer is doing just that.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he calls for a crackdown on illegal immigration, only to reply "aw geez" when informed undocumented workers have been landscaping his home.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he starts uncomfortably chanting "who let the dogs out" during what looks like his only interaction with African Americans on the campaign trail.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he still chants "who let the dogs out" after the world learns he strapped the family dog to the roof of his car.

You know Mitt is out of touch when his own adviser Michael Murphy informs Massachusetts voters in 2005 that Romney's "been a pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he said of Osama Bin Laden in 2007, "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he panders to the NRA by proudly declaring "I've been a hunter pretty much all my life," only to clarify two days later "I've always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints, if you will."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when explained that while he placed Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's work among his favorite novels, "I'm not in favor of his religion by any means. But he wrote a book called 'Battlefield Earth' that was a very fun science-fiction book."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when says "My life experience convinced me that Ronald Reagan was right" and giving himself a 10 out of 10 on the conservative scale a decade after proclaiming during his 1994 Senate run, "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he runs an ad in Spanish which concludes "soy Mitt Romney y apruebo este mensaje" (I'm Mitt Romney and I approved this message) after demanding that "English needs to be the language that is spoken in America. We cannot be a bilingual nation like Canada."

(This piece also appears at Perrspectives.)

Martin Wolf's Exchange : The political genius of supply-side economics

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CONELRAD Adjacent: Barry Goldwater's Mothers for Moral America

Sensen No Sen: Land of greatly diminished opportunity

The Reality-Based Community: The party of Lincoln vs the party of Jeff Davis

The Faithful Progressive: And to think the Republicans wanted to give up on the auto industry

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Ed Schultz held no punches back when he went after Hugh Hewitt's idiotic call for a national boycott of all GM and Chrysler cars because he calls them "socialist companies."

A pair of right-wing radio hosts says there's only one choice for conservatives angry about government involvement in the auto industry: Boycott GM. "Nobody wants to support an Obama company," Rush Limbaugh told his audience Friday, citing a poll showing that 17 percent of Americans backed a boycott of GM.

"Every dollar spent with GM is a dollar spent against free enterprise," conservative talker Hugh Hewitt wrote online last week.

"While it's not surprising that Rush Limbaugh would root for the failure of a national institution for partisan political gain, it is surprising that the other so-called leaders of the Republican party are silently going along with him given how many hard working Americans rely on GM for a living," said DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan.

So far, there is little evidence that the government's involvement is turning off buyers. In bankruptcy for the entire month of May, Chrysler had its best sales month of the year.

Ed hits the Grassley nail on the head. Why are Hugh Hewitt and Rush Limbaugh trying to destroy the American automotive industry? What about the families that need these jobs to survive? Will Hewitt and Limbaugh support all the families this child like boycott could affect?

Schultz is calling for a boycott of the Salem radio network.

Ed: Conservatives, are you out of your mind? Do you know how many Americans have lost their jobs in manufacturing? Do you know how many American families are being affected, their livelihoods are being drilled because of this recession and what do they do, they push back on the American families that are doing the absolute best they can to build a great product...

What do you say we just kick the American worker in the teeth. What do you say we just give all the money to Wall Street. Let's just take their health care, let's take their education, let's take their jobs. Let's just genuflect to the Hugh Hewitts of the world.

We know where Hewitt's heart resides. His love of CEOs and fat cats that prey on the working class to finance their palaces. And the media slobbers over Hewitt every time he writes a mindless book, but we never see a liberal on TV who releases one. Where's Will Bunch, where's Eric Boehlert, where's David Neiwert? All three have excellent books just release, but they are almost no where to be found on cable news. Why the silence of liberals? Anyway, it was good that Ed kicked Hugh in the head today.

Acoustic version of Won't Get Fooled Again by Pete Townsend

I'm going to share with you fine people something that apparently has escaped the notice of the producers and bookers of the Sunday news shows: The Democratic Party won last election day. Not just a little--but decisively. Democrats now hold the White House and a (theoretically) filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and House. A whopping percentage of Americans not only support our (say it with me now, Democratic) president, but think the country is going in the right direction.

Pretty decisive, wouldn't you say? I'd call that a mandate...some actual political capital, if you will. So who would be the natural choices for Sunday's shows? Why, Newt Gingrich, John McCain and Dick Cheney! That's right, the old faces that have been thoroughly rejected by citizens will be on to talk about the new face of the GOP.

Stunning. Here we sit, with crisis after crisis: economy, banking, auto industry, health care, climate change, Iraq, Afghanistan, (need I continue?) and what the bobbleheads think we should care about is the health of the GOP? There's a big WTF for you.

ABC's "This Week" — Retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, the president's national security adviser; Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

CBS'"Face the Nation" — Former Vice President Dick Cheney.

NBC's "Meet the Press" — Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai; Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Bob Woodward, Katty Kay, Andrea Mitchell and Rick Stengel; Topics: Will Afghanistan and Pakistan become a death trap for President Obama? Should sex, race and sexual orientation matter for the Supreme Court pick? Meter Questions: Can Obama keep Pakistan's government in power? YES: 2 NO: 10; Will Republicans genuinely reevaluate? YES: 4 NO: 8

CNN's "State of the Union" — Gen. David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command; Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Bob Casey, D-Pa.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Fareed sits down with the Dalai Lama. His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso speaks out about his struggle with China for the freedom of the Tibetan people. He talks to Fareed about oppression in the region and maintains that brutality is not engrained in humanity. The Dalai Lama also discusses his own succession and whether or not this spiritual institution will continue after his death.

"Fox News Sunday" — Petraeus; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

Okay, while I run back into bed, so my kids can serve me breakfast, tell us what's catching your eye this morning.

Oh yeah, and Happy Mother's Day to all my fellow mommies. Hope you are getting your fill of sticky pancake kisses and crayoned and glittered cards. I know I am.

It's all so damned incestuous, isn't it?

The man leading the Obama administration’s efforts to restructure the auto industry has been described in Securities and Exchange Commission documents as having arranged for his investment firm to pay more than $1 million to obtain New York State pension business.

Although he is not named in the documents, a person with knowledge of the inquiry said the investment executive is Steven Rattner, co-founder of the Quadrangle Group, the prominent private equity firm.

The S.E.C. complaint, filed as part of an expansive state and federal investigation into corruption at the state pension fund, details the efforts of Quadrangle to gain business from the pension fund beginning in 2004.

The person who received most of the $1 million-plus payment has been indicted, accused of selling access to the fund.

There is no indication in the complaint that Mr. Rattner faces criminal or civil charges in connection with the inquiry.

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(H/t Heather at VideoCafe)

Obama sure faces a tremendous amount of problems upon taking the oath of office.

President Obama has dropped the idea of appointing a single, powerful “car czar” to oversee the revamping of General Motors and Chrysler and will instead keep the politically delicate task in the hands of his most senior economic advisers, a top administration official said Sunday night.

Mr. Obama is designating the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, and the chairman of the National Economic Council, Lawrence H. Summers, to oversee a presidential panel on the auto industry. Mr. Geithner will also supervise the $17.4 billion in loan agreements already in place with G.M. and Chrysler, said the official, who insisted on anonymity.

The official also said that Ron Bloom, a restructuring expert who has advised the labor unions in the troubled steel and airline industries, would be named a senior adviser to Treasury on the auto crisis. The unexpected shift comes as G.M. and Chrysler race to complete broad restructuring plans they must file with the Treasury by Tuesday. The companies’ plans are required to show progress in cutting long-term costs as a condition for keeping their loans.

On FNS, Chris Wallace tried to smear the UAW by bringing up stalled negotiations by the union and the automakers as a way to paint them as selfish. The usual Republican anti union line. David Axlerod wouldn't comment on the negotiations, but did say a restructuring of the entire auto industry is needed and not just by the auto workers.

Wallace: How do you view that the UAW talks collapsed?

Axelrod: Well, obviously this is a difficult situation and everyone's going to have to continue to work toward a solution. We're going to wait and see what the Automakers have to say on Tuesday and go from there.

How interesting since the negotiations aren't dead in the water after all.

On Sunday afternoon, G.M. and the U.A.W. resumed discussions in Detroit about reducing the company’s labor costs, a person with direct knowledge of the talks said. This person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions are private, characterized the talks Sunday evening as “intense” but did not indicate that an agreement was imminent. The U.A.W. had walked away from the bargaining table late Friday as the two sides clashed over how to cover retiree health care costs.

I'm sure the Richard Shelby's of Congress will be getting a ton of media attention very soon as the auto industry problems heat up again. Michael Steele is probably looking at a fresh set of resumes for make-up people as my keyboard types these words.

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[Video: Protesters interrupt Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont.]

The representatives of the Big Three came back to Congress with tin cups in hand today, and you can watch them on most of the news channels today.

Humbled U.S. automakers pleaded with Congress Thursday for an expanded $34 billion rescue package, but heard fresh skepticism in a bumpy encore appearance.

“We made mistakes, which we’re learning from,” General Motors chief executive Rick Wagoner told the Senate Banking Committee.

Ford CEO Alan Mulally also acknowledged big mistakes, saying his company’s mantra once was “You build it, they will come.”

As Chuck Schumer observed, the problem is that they seem to want their bailout without setting the conditions first. Ain't gonna fly that way, fellas.

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On Late Edition, host Wolf Blitzer asks UAW President Ron Gettlefinger for his take on Mitt Romney's heartless and callously Republican "solution" to the auto industry crisis: take away health benefits and pensions for the laborers, otherwise known as "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."

It's curious to me that CNN, the NY Times or basically, anyone cares what Romney thinks on the Detroit bailout. His apparent bona fides being that he was the son of George Romney, while completely ignoring George's legacy at AMC, which was to successfully compete against the Big 3 by making more economic and efficient cars to their larger gas guzzlers. Does Romney urge the Big 3 to innovate and stop making cars Americans don't want to buy? Of course not. Does he urge them to make sensible changes to their lending arms? Uh uh. No, this is all the fault of those pesky blue collar employees who have the nerve to expect the auto industry to uphold their pension and healthcare commitments. The nerve!

Gettlefinger deftly charges that it's not surprising that the Republican would point the finger at workers, and it, like most Republican tenets, is not based in reality. But when he tries to bring up that this is a worldwide economic issue (because the lending arms of these automakers do have tentacles all over the globe), and it bears little difference from the financial bailout for which the Republicans were only too happy to pony up funds, Blitzer interrupts him to bring up yet another inane and irrelevant talking point: whether the CEOs will arrive in Washington DC via personal jet again.

I forget, was this an issue for BearStearns and AIG when they put their hand out? Way to get to the heart of such a critical issue for so many Americans, Wolfie.

Full transcripts below the fold

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