Liberalton Daily News Shows Editorial Bias

[XLFD]

The City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) has been leaning towards a 'progressive' big government agenda for quite a while, but rarely is it as flagrant as it was in Tuesday's edition (1-21-2014) on page 4, the editorial page.  While this is about as tolerable as any other noticeable bias, one would hope that our city's paper of record could refrain from showing it so openly.

 

At the right edge of the paper, down its length you had an article by local columnist George Dila, an unapologetic liberal, devoting a column criticizing 'Governor Soprano', otherwise known as New Jersey's Chris Christie, for its full length about his part in Bridge-gate, which is still unclear.  Nothing surprising there, except that Dila has been noticeably unperturbed about any of the numerous (and more substantive) Obama scandals and shortcomings over the last year.  Dila has chosen to ignore, rather than to defend them, which at least shows he has a little common sense, but it would be refreshing and credibility-enhancing to see him come out against other corruption in the national and local government that have non-conservative operatives involved.

 

But more telling was the editorial at the top of the page written by the COLDNews editorial board, which now consists of Publisher John Walker, Managing Editor Steve Begnoche, and News Editor Patti Klevorn.  Editorial Boards often try to moderate their positions if they are trying to show themselves to be unbiased purveyors of the news, even when they aren't.  But they clearly indicated that they were unimpressed by the Republican Michigan governor and legislature, and in awe of what President Obama has done for Michigan.  I offer two paragraphs of that editorial, unedited except for adding seven footnotes to facts, data, and counterpoints, in an honest debate over what the COLDNews editors accept as incontrovertible fact.  Those follow the editorial excerpt: 

 

 

  

City of Ludington Daily News Editorial (excerpt): 

 

"The "Big Three" are doing well again.  Little of that has to do with Michigan state government (see 1).  More of it has to do with the success of President Barack Obama's often criticized auto bailout (see 2), which allowed General Motors and Chrysler (see 3) time and ability to recreate themselves into leaner companies (see 4) without the legacy costs (see 5) that had burdened them.

Like the bailout or not, it worked (see 6) and helped Detroit automakers return to competitiveness (see 6 also).  Snyder and the Republican Michigan Legislature have reaped the fruits of that newfound success that was good for Michigan.  Luck and timing play a role in politics as it does in everything else (see 7).

 

1)  The State of Michigan has actually bent over backwards to keep the Big Three in the state and keep it solvent along the lines of tax breaks, incentives, and other economic development tools.  To reduce the 'legacy costs' burden mentioned deeper in the article, the state has recently became a right to work state and the Michigan Business Tax was eliminated.   Governor Snyder has went around the world hawking the Big Three.  There's more to making businesses do well than bailing them out with tax money.

2)  Was the auto bailout a success?  For those who believe 1)  in the use of taxpayer funds to underwrite private companies “too big to fail” (thereby virtually assuring a return to risky and/or irresponsible behavior); 2) the abandonment of the rule of law for the “greater good;” 3) the distortion of the free markets for political considerations (government picking winners and losers) and the 4) seemingly limitless expansion of executive power absent congressional input, the answer is yes.  Otherwise, no.

3)  Chrysler is now managed by Fiat, an Italian automaker, and is not truly an "American" car company anymore.  On June 10, 2009, Chrysler Group LLC emerged from a Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy and was sold to the Italian automaker Fiat.  On June 3, 2011, Fiat bought out the remaining U.S. Treasury’s stake in Chrysler for $500 million increasing its ownership of the automaker to 53%

4)  Leaner?!  Just days after the US government announced their exit from General Motors, in December 2013, the company announced a move that sounds like it could have come directly out of the Obama Administration playbook. GM is boasting about "creating or retaining" roughly a thousand jobs at the cost of approximately $1.3 million per job. 

5)  Definition of Legacy Costs: The costs involved with a company paying healthcare fees and other benefit-related costs for its current employees and retired pensioners.  GM continue to spend the tax money they were gifted as if the account will never become overdrawn, similar to how our government spends your money.

Incoming CEO, Mary Barra, should be wary of continuing the free-spending course set forth by the politically-influenced and Obama-appointed leadership at GM. If not, GM will fritter away the last of the $49.5 billion that it received from US taxpayers and the risks will increase when the cyclical nature of auto sales inevitably again rears its head.

6)  Peter Flaherty made these remarks on December 16, 2013 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC before the luncheon speech of outgoing General Motors CEO Dan Akerson:

President Obama justified the auto bailout by predicting it would make money for the taxpayer. With Treasury now selling its remaining shares, the direct loss is about $10 billion. So on its most fundamental level, the auto bailout is a failure.

But that $10 billion figure dramatically understates the true cost. There were separate multibillion dollar bailouts of Ally Financial, formerly know as GMAC, and Delphi and other suppliers. There was cash for clunkers, the government guarantee of warrantees, accelerated fleet purchases, etc., etc.

Treasury also allowed a novel application of the tax-loss carryforward provisions of the tax code during the GM bankruptcy, shielding $30-$40 billion in GM profits from taxation.

In addition to all these costs, the bailout probably ensures future bailout costs when GM comes back to the government during the next automotive sales downturn, which will come. All automakers are making money now when the economic cycle is favorable, but only some will be equipped to survive the next downturn.

The bailout insulated GM from market forces that would have forced the company to operate differently. Instead, there has been only modest culture change and the old ways persist, enforced by the UAW, which also is now GM's largest shareholder.

The bailout did not save jobs. The massive misallocation of capital to an inefficient market participant can only cost jobs in the long run. 

A few days ago, a study was released by something called the Center for Automotive Research which claimed that the bailout saved 1.5 million jobs. The study's release seemed coordinated with the Treasury exit and Mr. Akerson's speech today, not surprising in light of the fact this Center is substantially funded by the government. The study's assertion that the bailout saved jobs is only plausible if one also believes in alchemy.

As we are seeing now, macroeconomic conditions are the biggest of determinant of auto sales. There are dozens of manufacturers. Consumers have many choices.  The same number of cars will be sold whether GM was bailed out or not. The cars will have to be built by autoworkers somewhere. Bailing out GM did not increase demand, it did not increase the total number of autoworker jobs, nor did it increase whatever multiplier effect the spending power of those autoworkers had.

No follow-on argument may be made, either, that the GM bailout saved AMERICAN jobs. All the big automakers are now worldwide companies, especially GM. One effect of the bailout may have been to preserve some American jobs governed by UAW contracts at the expense of American autoworkers in right-to-work states. But maybe that was the whole point. Obama narrowly won the critical state of Ohio, whereas Romney won handily in states like South Carolina.

Thus, the GM bailout was at its core, about politics, and the corruption of our political system. This was best illustrated during the final stretch of last year's presidential when GM spokesmen openly attacked Mitt Romney for asserting that bailed-out GM and Chrysler would move jobs abroad, which by the way, is turning out to be true. 

Because of the significant taxpayer stake in GM, the company should have been carefully neutral, whether it considered Romney's assertions fair or not. Although it was something I predicted beforehand, it is outrageous that GM acted as an appendage of the Obama campaign.

The bailout's most serious and unfortunate result, however, is how it undermined property rights and the rule of law. During the rigged bankruptcy process, GM bondholders, who were higher on the securitization hierarchy than the UAW, were wiped out as the UAW was granted billions in equity. In short, it was government-orchestrated theft.

President Obama labeled GM bondholders as "speculators" but they included middle-class people like NLPC Associate Fellow Mark Modica. Mark was the business manager of a Saturn dealership. Mark had most of his savings in GM bonds that became almost worthless.

Dan Akerson is declaring the bailout a success. It certainly will be for him. He will no doubt pop up somewhere else becoming even richer trading on his GM experience. Too bad Mark Modica, or other ordinary taxpayers, will not have the same opportunity

http://nlpc.org/stories/2013/12/16/sorry-dan-akerson-gm-bailout-fai...

7)  If you weren't convinced up to this point, the editorial board of the City of Ludington Daily News has great disdain for the reality that the Republicans are in charge of the state, and actually making conditions better for businesses to succeed, without giving them as large of handouts as the Democrats.  They make flippant statements about our state's leaders and policies, because the state isn't getting more involved in private business and giving more corporate welfare out to these companies, yet the editors don't directly say so. 

Heaven knows our country wasn't the most industrious nation by far on the planet before our government decided to get involved with "economic development" strategies, that tend to weaken the structure of healthy economies by turning free market capitalism into crony pseudo-capitalism with unethical public-private partnerships' between businesses and government, which is what the bailout did.

 

[Willy]

Terrific article X. You should send it to the LDN for publication on the editorial page. It seems that LDN forgets that almost all of the dealerships that GM and Chrysler eliminated due to downsizing were owned by Republican and Conservatives. On the other hand Liberal and Democrat dealerships were spared. And let's not forget that all the pensions that were eliminated were non union pensions. Every time LDN tries to show their political know how they fall flat on their edited behinds. 

[XLFD]

Thanks, and to be fair, not one hour after I posted this, I read an article in today's COLDNews editorial page by Thomas Shepardson, a Scottville-based conservative columnist, doing a contra article to the Chris Christie stories, citing the press that is getting, when the substantive Obama scandals and ineptitude are being overlooked by most major media. 

Shepardson is a good read, but he only has a column show up in the paper about twice a month.  The few times I have sent material to the COLDNews and had it published, they edited it to fit their paper (physically and spiritually).  I don't approve of that kind of journalism; it's kind of like reading a condensed illustrated graphic novel and thinking it is equivalent to reading a classic novel.

[AQUAMAN]

Over the years I too have written editorial responses to Dila and others off the beaten path of reasonableness. The exact same response of catch 22's was also upon me, that of changing and editing the original context, to fit the LDN's agenda more closely. The "free press" is no longer free speech for what appears to most to be right, quite the contrary. Begnoche is obviously a very left wing liberal, and he talks, walks, and prints the paper accordingly. It appears the new Publisher Walker is a perfect fit for them, as could be expected from a big city operation downstate.

[Willy]

To avoid having letters from citizens edited for length the LDN should stipulate a maximum size for letters so comments from the citizens can be printed in their entirety.

[dowland]

Great reporting, then he would have to admit that Granholm ran the state into the ground. That would be hard for him, since his daughter worked for her. His true colors have finally come out. As Hank William JR said in his song, it is a family tradition.  So far he hasn't attacked the local tea party.  He will attack them though, he can't help him self.

[XLFD]

Granholm's eight years did blow us all away.  I'm not altogether happy with Snyder's performance so far, but it's a lot more responsible than what we had before, and what the democratic gubernatorial candidates in the wings are offering. 

The COLDNews will more likely attack any local tea party initiative like the mainstream media-- distort the messages and the motives of the people involved, or just ignore them completely if they can't do the former.