Note: This was originally posted at Pajamas Media, and teased here at BizzyBlog, on Friday morning.

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No amount of government-supplied capital can change that.

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By the time it “collapsed into the government’s arms” on the morning of June 1, the bankruptcy filing by General Motors surprised no one. In retrospect, given our pathetic leadership, it’s surprising how many thought that it, or Chrysler’s filing the previous month, could have been avoided.

Now, amidst all the happy-talk about how the two companies will succeed once they emerge from bankruptcy, there’s even doubt about that. James Pethokoukis, blogging at Reuters, tells us that former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich thinks that the GM bankruptcy may only be “slowing down the death process so communities and workers and the economy have more time to adjust to GM’s demise.” If that’s true of GM, you can forget about a post-bankruptcy Chrysler having any legitimate viability except as a consumer of taxpayer cash.

Even the companies’ emergence from bankruptcy is, as of this writing, far from certain. Having ridden roughshod over the first-lien rights of secured Chrysler creditors, the vast majority of whom were intimidated into settling for 29 cents on the dollar, the government finds itself still having to deal with a June 5 court hearing in federal appellate court, where recalcitrant Indiana pension funds could conceivably stop Chrysler’s sale to Fiat. There is also a suit by terminated Chrysler dealers that appears to at least have some disruptive potential. A tight deal completion deadline could mean that court appeals by the losing sides in either case, if not promptly heard, would enable Fiat to walk away and completely scuttle the deal.

Thanks to the government’s heavy-handed treatment of GM’s unsecured creditors, that bankruptcy could face similar potential hurdles in the coming months.

But regardless of the bankruptcy-reemergence outcomes at these two former American icons, all of the key players involved –- the companies’ senior managements, the United Auto Workers union, and the government –- have failed miserably, both in the run-up to the mid-December bailout and during the 5-1/2 months that have since transpired.

All three groups, dreading the possibility that vehicle buyers would avoid doing business with bankrupt companies, failed to consider the possibility, long since borne out, that they would more decisively shun the beneficiaries of government bailouts, for reasons both practical (doubts about warranties and repairs) and philosophical (resentment over government involvement in giving money to, and then running, supposedly private companies).

In the first five months of 2009, GM’s reported year-over-year monthly unit sales declines have averaged almost 42%. Chrysler’s average drops have been almost 47%. The companies’ four biggest competitors -– Ford, Toyota, Honda, and Nissan -– have suffered far smaller average declines. Ford actually reported higher worldwide revenue in the first quarter than GM for the first time in over 80 years, moving from 4% behind GM to 11% ahead of it in one quarter, despite operating for a while earlier this year under a mistaken public assumption that the government was bailing out the entire domestic auto industry. Having recovered from a nearly fatal bout of political correctness of its own a bit more than a year ago, Ford appears poised to dramatically increase its top-line lead over GM.

The companies’ senior managements naively assumed that a business-hostile administration run by the most radical president in American history would resist the urge to intervene and then take over their operations.

The United Auto Workers union, as it has for at least two decades, utterly failed at what should have been its prime directive: to preserve workers’ jobs. In the previous quarter-century, as Japanese and other competitors continued to take market share from the Big Three, the union chose to preserve the artificially high wages and benefits of its senior members at the expense of the less experienced. Then, during post-bailout crunch time, union President Ron Gettelfinger balked at potential concessions for far too long. It’s also likely that he has not given back as much as he has claimed. This, and the post-bailout sales declines noted earlier, have forced the companies to idle and ultimately close more plants than they otherwise might have. Immediately after its bankruptcy filing Chrysler closed five plants it had no expressed intention of shuttering back in February. GM will be closing at least a dozen plants.

But even beyond its failure to gauge the negative sales fallout from statist involvement, it is the government — particularly the Democratic Party that has held most of its levers — that bears the lion’s share of the blame for GM’s and Chrysler’s final march from being on the brink a year ago to flat on their faces now. That’s because it is they who brought us the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy beginning in June of last year.

Specifically:

• They are the ones who struck fear into the hearts of car buyers by telling everyone they would refuse to exploit our God-given fossil fuel resources regardless of the circumstances or consequences.
• They are the ones who promised punitive increases of 15% or more in marginal tax rates on our most productive people — many of whom tend to buy cars –- in the name of redistributing relative pittances to everyone else.
• It is their party’s decades-long romance with lending mortgage money to unqualified borrowers that led to the multibillion-dollar implosions at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and to the resulting wreckage at other financial institutions.
• And finally, at crunch time, it is they who failed to lead the country back from their recession earlier this year by enacting an ineffective, time-delayed “stimulus” instead of broad-based tax cuts.

From Madrid:

Jun 4, 2009, 11:53 pm

More than 40 civic organizations have joined together to organize a massive pro-life demonstration in support of pregnant women and in opposition to the government’s proposal to reform Spain’s abortion laws. The demonstration is set to take place on October 17 in Madrid.

The spokesperson for the organization Right to Life, Gador Joya, told reporters this week that the pro-life community intends to make its voice heard and to urge the government to turn back from the “most violent and radical abortion program in Europe.”

“Our more than 100,000 volunteers will do their best to make the October demonstration another success for an independent and free society in the face of imposition and abuse by our leaders,” she said.

….. This will be the second massive demonstration against abortion, after the March for Life that took place on March 29, when 500,000 took to the streets of Madrid to protest in support of human life. Eighty seven other marches took place simultaneously across Spain and Latin America.

Go here for the full story.

Not suprisingly, it took some doing to wrap my thoughts around this article because it was so poorly written.  With a little scrutiny however, one can see the two distinct agendas behind the Fred/Fan mess still at work, as well as the bottom line options and consequences.

Since the author doesn’t seem to know the meaning of “transitional statements” or “segues,” I’ll try to piece it together to make my point (“Exit Strategy” link is mine)…

June 2 (Bloomberg) — Christopher Cox, in one of his last acts as Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, took Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s regulator to task in a letter questioning whether the agency was upholding its legal duty to “preserve and conserve” the mortgage companies’ assets.

Cox asked in the Jan. 16 letter to Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart whether the government-sponsored enterprises were being pressed too hard to bolster U.S. housing markets at the expense of profits. As a member of an oversight board advising Lockhart, Cox urged Lockhart to develop an “exit strategy” from government conservatorship that would restore the companies’ finances.

….. Public demands on the companies may prevent their emergence from government control, Cox said in the letter. He warned of “significantly” adding to taxpayer liabilities.

Washington-based Fannie Mae and McLean, Virginia-based Freddie Mac are the largest U.S. mortgage-finance companies, owning or guaranteeing about 55 percent of single-family loans. They were seized by President George W. Bush’s administration in September as their losses deepened.

….. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were among the few remaining sources of mortgage credit after the housing market collapse last year. The Bush administration pushed the companies to reduce fees and loosen credit standards to stem foreclosures.

Obama went further than Bush, making the companies a central part of his plan to save as many as 9 million homeowners from foreclosure through low-cost refinancing and easing of loan terms. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are required to cover $25 billion of the administration’s $75 billion loan-modification program called Making Home Affordable.

“Fannie and Freddie are being used by the Obama administration, as they were by the prior administration, as social policy tools,” said Joshua Rosner, an analyst with independent research firm Graham Fisher & Co. in New York.

Both companies said in securities filings last month that policy demands are hampering their recovery, and may leave them dependent on government aid.

….. Fannie Mae has reported a combined $86.8 billion in net losses going back to the third quarter of 2007, and Freddie Mac has logged $63.6 billion in losses over the same period. To remain solvent, the companies have requested a combined $84.9 billion in taxpayer funds from a $400 billion pool set up by the Treasury after their takeover.

At the core of their troubles are about $152.3 billion in subprime and “Alt-A” assets acquired mostly from 2005 through 2007, according to Lockhart. Cox said in the letter that the volume of “high risk mortgage products” owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may be closer to $1.7 trillion.

Failure to make Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac financially sound would impose expanded burdens on the Treasury and private debt markets because their $1.7 trillion in unsecured debt and $4 trillion in mortgage bonds are so widely held, he said. The government would bear responsibility even though the companies’ liabilities aren’t technically backed by its full faith and credit, he wrote.

The U.S. may be forced to assume the companies’ liabilities, increasing the $11.3 trillion in outstanding U.S. debt by about 50 percent and hampering the Treasury’s ability to borrow, Cox said.

OK, so while sinking deeper into debt and losing money by the minute, Fred/Fan is juggling both a socio-political agenda (keeping Joe CantMakeEnough in the home he should have never been approved to buy) and a financial agenda (getting Fred/Fan OUT from under the United States Government).

Additionally, that discrepancy between what number (in bold above) constitutes Fred/Fan’s high risk mortgage products is outrageous.   Given that the political agenda of Fred/Fan’s hacks in the US government made it possible for them to procure & package toxic assets long before 2005-2007, the number is arguably closer to Cox’s $1.7 trillion.

Now I’m no finance wiz, but logic dictates that first and foremost, they have to get the toxic assets off the books.  Otherwise, Fred/Fan eventually becomes yet another government entitlement program.

So, do we learn from our mistakes and escort ”Johnny CantMakeEnough” into a more realistic living situation NOW, deal with (i.e., write off) the toxic assets and take the hit upfront OR or do we put the entire US Government on the hook and increase the $11.3 trillion in debt by half?

Newsflash: The United States Government does not have a lender of last resort. And when the Chinese stop buying our debt and call in their loans, what will happen?  My guess is that they will either accept land that our government takes from us as partial payment, or call in the loans.  What in the world do our “Gee, socialism looks great on paper” dimwits in DC think will happen then? See Zimbabwe (full PDF here).

Well that is when missiles in China will start fine-tuning in on us (I won’t assume here that our sensitive bunch in DC have the guts to defend this country).

Ha, ha…it’s all very funny, isn’t it?

Even if they ultimately lose their last-minute court battle, the Indiana pension funds defending their rights as secured first-lien creditors of Chrysler have done a valuable deed.

A $10,000 Democratic Party donor, Lauria, despite clear evidence of intimidation of his originally larger pool of clients by Obama himself (in his April 30 speech announcing the company’s bankruptcy filing) and his car guys, has nonetheless bravely pursued the important contract law and fiduciary duty issues involved in the shortchanging of his clients for several weeks.

Wait until you see the word the government lawyer used to describe Lauria.

As a result of Lauria’s legal efforts, we have also learned of e-mails showing that the government drove the Chrysler-Fiat deal over Chrysler management concerns, and did so despite more than likely knowing very little about shotgun marriage partner Fiat.

Documents forced out as a result of Lauria’s legal efforts include e-mails showing that the government drove the Chrysler-Fiat deal over Chrysler management concerns, did so despite more than likely knowing very little about shotgun marriage partner Fiat.

All of this and more is in a report published last night in the Wall Street Journal by Neil King Jr. and Jeffrey McCracken.

Here are key paragraphs revealing containing items I expect most of the rest of the establishment media to ignore (bolds after title are mine):

U.S. Pushed Fiat Deal on Chrysler

The Obama administration rushed an alliance between Chrysler LLC and Fiat SpA despite Chrysler’s worries about Fiat’s financial health and its willingness to share technology, according to internal company emails.

The emails show Fiat ignoring requests for documents and trying to change contract terms late in the talks. A Chrysler adviser at one point said the deal risked looking as if the U.S. auto maker and the Treasury Department, which helped broker the pact, were “in bed with a shady partner.” In another note, an official referred to the Treasury Department as “God.”

….. On Friday, a federal appeals court upheld Chrysler’s Fiat deal, dismissing a challenge by dissident Chrysler debt holders. But the court also issued a stay until 4 p.m. Monday — leaving a small window for Thomas Lauria, the lawyer pursuing the case, to appeal to the Supreme Court. One judge on the three-judge panel suggested the Supreme Court should have “a swing at this ball.”

Mr. Lauria’s persistence led one government lawyer in the Chrysler case to dub him a “terrorist” in an email to a Chrysler adviser.

….. The emails, which run from mid-March until early May, were put into the court record following a request by Mr. Lauria, the lawyer fighting the bankruptcy on behalf of various Indiana pension and investment funds that hold Chrysler bank debt. They argue that the case has trampled on established bankruptcy law.

….. Chrysler’s advisers told the company their Italian counterparts were refusing to provide sufficient financial information to evaluate the deal. A team sent to Fiat headquarters in Turin, Italy, reported back on March 14 that “no financial due diligence … has or can be performed.”

An internal memo 13 days later from Chrysler’s advisory team also said Fiat’s “off-balance-sheet investments” in joint ventures around the world posed an economic risk and a political risk,” including the appearance that “Treasury/Chrysler” was “in bed with a shady partner.”

Eight days before President Barack Obama announced his support for the alliance in an April 30 speech, Chrysler officials were still bristling over what they considered Fiat’s unwillingness to provide even basic information about its finances.

….. Fiat is putting in no cash.

….. Despite the push to do a deal with Fiat, Chrysler advisers continued into April urging the Treasury to think again about a potential merger with GM. Earlier talks between the two auto giants had broken down in November, and the Obama administration put little stock in the idea.

How did “Treasury/Chrysler” get from “lacking basic information” about Fiat’s finances to completing sufficient due diligence to support making the deal with a very complex company in eight days? Additionally, Fiat’s “off-balance-sheet investments” seem to have a whiff of Enron-like potential.

The two WSJ reporters also reveal how the government, despite the urgings of Chrysler management, refused to explore the viability of combining it with deeply troubled but at least financially transparent General Motors.

The funds are appealing to the Supreme Court. Bloomberg reports that “A creditor bid for Supreme Court intervention would likely go first to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who handles emergency matters from the New York-based federal appeals court that ruled yesterday. She could act on her own or refer the request to the full nine-member court.” Justice Ginsurg’s gatekeeper function would appear to indicate that the Indiana pension funds will see not see justice served.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Houston, USA and Normandy, France:

June 5, 2009, 8:33PM

Decades passed before Houston’s Clyde Combs told his children he was part of the massive D-Day invasion when Allied troops fought past Nazi mines and machine guns to storm France’s beaches and march on to liberate Europe.

Neither did he mention he was aboard a superfast attack craft on June 6, 1944, and helped protect the west flank of invading forces as they established a beachhead, fished dead sailors out of the sea, and hunted for German soldiers fleeing in the darkness.

The 84-year-old former Navy PT boat crewman didn’t tell, he said, because he didn’t think anyone cared.

“It wasn’t considered a big deal,” said Combs, who still has a full head of hair and is probably lean enough to climb into his Cracker Jack uniform. “You were in the war, and you made it back and whatever,” he said. “No, I didn’t discuss it.”

On Friday, Combs was inducted into France’s prestigious Legion of Honor to commemorate the battle’s 65th anniversary today.

With the passing of time, as the offensive was pushed into history books, public interest grew in events surrounding the D-Day invasion. A massive fighting force, including more than 150,000 personnel, 5,000 ships and 11,000 planes, pushed across the English Channel and roared ashore along the Normandy region’s coastline.

“The invading armada was one of the largest armadas in the world’s history,” Combs said. “And to have been a small, tiny part of it in any way is such a privilege.”
A train to Normandy

Combs and dozens of American D-Day veterans are back in France for the anniversary. They were awarded their Legion of Honor medals in a ceremony at Napoleon Bonaparte’s tomb.

The veterans are to mark D-Day with a train ride to Normandy, for a ceremony and gathering during which Combs is to meet President Barack Obama as well as the leaders of Canada, Britain and France.

Combs and one other Navy veteran, who was on a landing craft that day, are expected to offer brief remarks at one of the events at the hallowed beachside cemetery, where more than 9,300 American service members are buried. Combs said he plans to speak from the heart but has no prepared remarks.

Combs would be the last to say he was special. As he sees it, then 19, he was doing his part at D-Day, doing the job he was trained to do.

The real heroes are the thousands of service members killed on D-Day, he said.

About 10,000 Allied service members died that first day of the battle, including 1,068 sailors.

“There are others far more deserving than I,” Combs said. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

Yikes (from Michael’s Comments; HT BizzyBlog commenter dscott):

For hard-of-comprehension lefties, the three lines, all of which start in Q12007, are:

• “With Recovery Plan” — What the Obama administration claimed would happen to the unemployment rate if the so-called, misnamed economic “stimulus package,” the one that nobody had the time to read, passed.
• “Without Recovery Plan” — What the Obama administration claimed would happen to the unemployment rate if the so-called, misnamed economic “stimulus package,” the one that nobody had the time to read, didn’t pass.
• Third line ending in dots for March ’09, April ’09, and May ’09 — What has really happened to the unemployment rate since the so-called, misnamed economic “stimulus package,” the one that nobody had the time to read, passed.

The three dots mean that things are not only worse than Obama predicted if the plan passed, but they are worse than Obama predicted if the plan didn’t pass. Three months in, it has become pretty close to conclusively clear that we would have been better off if we had done nothing.

I blame Bush …. and Rush Limbaugh …. and Sean Hannity …. and Dick Cheney (/sarc).

Don’t blame Boehner:

It doesn’t seem like it would be too much to ask CNNMoney’s headline e-mailers to read past the first sentence of a government announcement. But, maybe it is.

Here is the first two sentences of the Employment Situation Report from Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Labor Statistics released this morning:

Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 345,000 in May, about half the average monthly decline for the prior 6 months, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today.  The unemployment rate continued to rise, increasing from 8.9 to 9.4 percent.

Ahead of the 8:30 a.m. report, according to Reuters, Dow futures were up 54 points, while S&P and NASDAQ futures were up 5 and 5.75 points, respectively (the time-stamp is 9:22, but the narrative is clearly pre-8:30).

Just after the market opened, I received this CNNMoney e-mail:

But according to this AFP report, expectations were that “employers ….. (will) have cut 520,000 jobs, down from 539,000 in April. But the unemployment rate is still expected to have jumped to 9.2 percent, its highest since 1983.” Thus, today report was clearly a not-as-bad news, worse news result.

“Better-than-expected” is obviously only half true, indicating that an hour after the employment report’s release, the intrepid folks responsible for generating the CNNMoney e-mails either hadn’t read the BLS’s second sentence, or didn’t think we needed to know about it.

As to stocks “soaring,” the Dow, S&P and NASDAQ went up about 88, 10, and 16 points, respectively, in the first 10-15 minutes after the opening. Except for the NASDAQ, the majority of the early gains were already built-in ahead of the employment report. As of this writing, today’s indices are below where the futures were just before 8:30.

Soar, schmoar.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Run-up:

• ADP’s National Employment Report on the private sector showed 532,000 jobs lost in May, and revised its original April figure of -491,000 down to -545,000.
• Predictions for today’s report are grim. AFP says that “Most analysts expect employers to have cut 520,000 jobs, down from 539,000 in April. But the unemployment rate is still expected to have jumped to 9.2 percent, its highest since 1983.”

Here’s the news from Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS):

Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 345,000 in May, about half the average monthly decline for the prior 6 months, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today.  The unemployment rate continued to rise, increasing from 8.9 to 9.4 percent. Steep job losses continued in manufacturing, while declines moderated in construction and several service-providing industries.

Talk about a mixed bag — Many fewer jobs lost compared to expectations, but an unemployment rate that’s noticeably higher.

Here’s a major anomaly — BLS’s first paragraph discussing the unemployment rate, which uses the “Household Survey,” says that 787,000 jobs were lost in May using that report’s measurement methods, which are reportedly less precise than the jobs data, which is based on the “Establishment Survey” of employers.

My knee-jerk theory would be that the ranks of the self-employed, who tend to be missed in the Establishment Survey, got seriously depleted during May.

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UPDATE: The fact that ADP’s private sector job-loss number of -532,000 is over 200,000 higher than than Uncle Sam’s comparable -338,000 (-345,000 less 7,000 government jobs lost) would support the idea that many of self-employed abandoned their businesses in May. ADP does a huge business with employers of 1-9 people, and even does a lot for people who just work by themselves. Many of these people picked up by ADP get missed by the Establishment Survey’s data collectors, but are more likely to get picked by those involved in BLS’s Household Survey.

It’s here.

It will go up at BizzyBlog on Sunday morning (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.

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Left on the cutting room floor: Did you know that the Obama transition/presidential “automotive task force” had only one full-timer on board from Election Night last year until mid-February? Further, that single person, 31, had no previous auto industry involvement or experience.

I kid you not (HT to Glenn Beck, who hit this story hard on his Tuesday program):

Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School ….. had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.

Nor, for that matter, had he given much thought to what ailed an industry that had been in decline ever since he was born. A bit laconic and looking every bit the just-out-of-graduate-school student adjusting to life in the West Wing — “he’s got this beard that appears and disappears,” says Steven Rattner, one of the leaders of President Obama’s automotive task force — Mr. Deese was thrown into the auto industry’s maelstrom as soon the election-night parties ended.

“There was a time between Nov. 4 and mid-February when I was the only full-time member of the auto task force,” Mr. Deese, a special assistant to the president for economic policy, acknowledged recently as he hurried between his desk at the White House and the Treasury building next door. “It was a little scary.”

Kid, if you’re a little scared, how do you think the rest of us feel knowing that a complete newbie, “who is neither a formally trained economist nor a business school graduate, and who never spent much time flipping through the endless studies about the future of the American and Japanese auto industries,” was a key influencer, if not the key influencer, in the decisions to turn GM and Chrysler into Obama Motors?

As Glenn Reynolds sardonically notes from time to time, “Our country is in the very best of hands.”

Some data points that need to get recorded here for future reference:

• First quarter 2009 GDP was revised a week ago from an annualized -6.1% to -5.7%. Combined with the government’s previous figures of -0.5% in 3Q08 and -6.3% in 4Q08, this means that the economy’s estimated shrink during the three full quarters we have endured the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy, aka the POR Recession As Normal People Define It, has been 3.17%.
• The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) reported Monday that its May Manufacturing Index came in at 42.8% (up from 40.1% in April). Wednesday, ISM’s Non Manufacturing Index showed 44.0% (up from 43.7% in April). Both are still well below the above-50% reading needed to be in expansion. The Manufacturing number is nice, but the near-stall in Non Manufacturing, which is over 80% of the economy, is pretty strong evidence that the media’s positivity about our truly negative situation isn’t warranted.
• Speaking of false positivity, ADP’s National Employment report showed a seasonally adjusted 532,000 jobs lost in May, down very slightly from April’s -545,000. Given that result, this e-mail alert I received yesterday from CNNMoney.com is transparently deceptive:

  

  “Better”? Give me a break.

  At this rate of “better,” the economy, after losing over 10.5 million more jobs in the interim, will finally start adding jobs 41 months from now during the final month of 2012.

  A post related to this final point is at NewsBusters.org.

An overzealous press secretary thought he struck early gold.

Unfortunately, based on what I have found, in his apparent enthusiasm, he has overstated the facts on ground in Columbus, Georgia.

I received the following e-mail yesterday from Rob Nichols at Kasich for Ohio:

NCR’S MOVE TO GEORGIA LEVERAGED WITH STIMULUS MONEY
Strickland’s Support for Federal Bailout Program Helps Pave the Way for Dayton Job Losses

Columbus, Ohio – According to the Columbus (GA) Ledger-Enquirer, Columbus, Georgia, plans to use federal stimulus money to purchase a building that NCR will use to house its new ATM manufacturing facility.

“Ohioans will remember that Governor Strickland led his fellow governors to Washington, D.C., to beg for federal stimulus money to bail him out. Now that same money is being used by the State of Georgia to lure NCR away from its 125 year home in Dayton, Ohio,” said Rob Nichols, press secretary for Kasich for Governor. “It is astonishing that Dayton residents’ own tax dollars are being used to finance the departure of one of the city’s most important economic assets.”

….. “Beyond the incentives package offered to NCR, Ohio offered no compelling economic reason to stay and conduct business in Ohio,” said Nichols. “Sadly, the Governor has done nothing to address the fundamental problems that have plagued Ohio’s economy for decades and have put us at a competitive disadvantage in our ability to bring jobs to this state.”

That’s fine, if you ignore the following, which of course you can’t — According to the Ledger-Enquirer (click on the fourth item at the link to get to the actual article), as of Tuesday, the stimulus finding in Columbus, Georgia is NOT “being used,” isn’t on hand to be used, and may not ever arrive (bolds are mine):

To get up and running quickly, NCR will move into the Corporate Ridge Business Park facility formerly owned and occupied by Panasonic, which has been out of it for almost two years.

The 340,000 square foot facility was purchased for $5.2 million by the Development Authority of Columbus.

To make the deal happen, the Development Authority and city of Columbus got “creative and aggressive,” said Becca Hardin, the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce industrial recruiter credited by Perdue, Mayor Jim Wetherington and NCR officials as the one who deserves credit for her work on the project for the last four months.

How aggressive?

The city has said it will guarantee $7.5 million in incentives. The city has applied to the Economic Development Administration for $5.5 million in federal stimulus money to offset the cost of buying the Panasonic property.

“The city is the backstop in the event we don’t get the money from the EDA” Wetherington said.

If the city has to fork over money for the project, it will borrow the money and pay it back at no more than $1 million per year, Wetherington said.

Now it may be that Columbus, GA will ultimately get the stimulus money (though given the likelihood that politics is involved in the EDA’s decision-making process, Nichols’s press release may cause its rejection). And of course, NCR is leaving Ohio because of its awful business climate whether or not the stimulus money arrives.

But the stimulus money is NOT currently “being used by the State of Georgia to lure NCR away from its 125 year home in Dayton, Ohio” — because they don’t have it to use it.

This is really weak.

Rob Nichols, you screwed up, and the center-right, sensible conservative Ohio blogosphere, including but not limited to the State of Ohio Blogger Alliance, is not going to pretend that you haven’t when we find things like this.

The press spokesmouth for the guy who wants to be Ohio’s next governor should be better than this. He has 17 months to prove it.

________________________________________

UPDATE, 11:30 p.m.: I’d say after looking over this Columbus (OH) Dispatch report that Columbus, GA can forget about that stimulus money and start working on Plan B (or I should say Plan S for “self-reliant) –

“We have applied for stimulus funding, but we haven’t heard anything whether we’re going to get the money we applied for,” he (Columbus GA Mayor Jim Wetherington) said. “If we don’t, then local government would have to foot the bill.”

Wetherington said he “personally wouldn’t have a problem” using federal stimulus dollars to lure jobs from one state to another, although he acknowledged that “other people might. This money that we’ve applied for is what President Obama said is going to be available.”

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who cast the deciding vote in the Senate to pass the stimulus bill earlier this year, was sending a letter today to Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke objecting to such us of stimulus money.

“He is writing Secretary Locke to urge him to prevent funds from being used for the purpose of building a new facility that would take jobs from Dayton, Ohio, to Columbus, Ga.,” said Meghan Dubyak, a Brown spokeswoman. “The senator would say the Economic Recovery Package (stimulus bill) was passed to create jobs, not help relocate them.”

Because of the Democratic majorities in Congress, it would be reasonable to believe that what Sherrod Brown wants, Sherrod Brown will get — which makes the Kasich release at the beginning of this post even more ridiculous and wrong.

_____________________________________________________

UPDATE 2, June 5: An early morning report from the Columbus (OH) Dispatch indicates that Columbus, GA will probably have a very difficult time getting that stimulus money –

The White House appeared yesterday to rule out using federal stimulus money to help Georgia officials build a manufacturing plant for NCR Corp., which is moving its headquarters from Dayton to Georgia.

The effort by officials of Columbus, Ga., to seek money from the $787 billion economic-stimulus package provoked anger and outrage among Ohio politicians, who said federal tax dollars should not help NCR move to another state.

A White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said no stimulus money has been awarded, “and the administration obviously had no role in the relocation,” noting that NCR had decided to move before Georgia officials said they would apply for the money.

But the official added that the Department of Commerce, which has control over the money, won’t allow it be used to encourage “corporate relocation from one U.S. region to another and will review every request very carefully.”

However, the Commerce Department seemed to leave the door open to using stimulus money to help Georgia build a plant for NCR.

Another source, who also spoke anonymously, said a Commerce official told the staff of an Ohio lawmaker last night that there did not appear to be a direct link between NCR leaving Dayton and the request by Georgia officials for stimulus money. But, the source said, “We’re going to work to make sure this doesn’t happen again in the future.”

Rob Nichols loses either way:

• If the Obama administration stops the stimulus money from going to Columbus, GA, which in the real seems pretty likely, there was no obviously no justification for the press release.
• If Commerce lets it go because of the lack of a direct link, he was still wrong in issuing the release, because the stimulus money was not approved, and therefore wasn’t “being used,” at the time he issued his clearly false gotcha.

Kasich deserves better than this from his PressSec. He’d better get it, or it will be a long 17 months.

Claudia Rossett’s column on the 20th anniversary of the massacre at the Wall Street Journal, is a must-read.

Go there for her eyewitness account. What I have excerpted here relates to her historical perspective and modern lessons:

…. Tiananmen was — and is — important because that spring of 1989 was the only time in the despotic, 60-year history of the People’s Republic of China that the people themselves enjoyed the chance to speak, debate and assemble freely. What they did with that freedom, by the millions, was call peacefully for China’s government to institutionalize those rights. They called for democracy and marched under banners bearing exactly that word. They asked for the right to choose their leaders and hold them to account.

…. Since the Tiananmen uprising of 1989, China’s rulers have loosened the economic strictures enough to allow remarkable growth — testament to the vibrancy of the Chinese people given even half a chance. Out of this, China’s rulers have devoted enormous resources to projects meant to suggest they run a modern nation — sending astronauts into space, convening conferences on the climate, and hosting the 2008 Olympics.

Count me unimpressed. The real sign of modernity will come when China opens up its political system enough so that the country’s leaders no longer fear June 4 but treat the Tiananmen uprising with the honor it deserves.

During the protests, on one of those warm spring evenings just before the crackdown, I was wandering around Tiananmen, notebook in hand, and came across a young man sitting in a beach chair on the monument where the demonstrators were soon to make their last stand. He had a question about what happens when you get your dream of democracy: What then? As he put it: “I know what China is dreaming. What is America dreaming?”

The answer of free societies, the old American dream, is that you may choose for yourself. Freedom, in the framework of a true democracy, allows individuals to weigh their own talents, skills and ambitions, choose their own trade-offs, and chart their own dreams. That gives rise to innovation, exuberance and prosperity of a kind that no government can plan or centrally command into existence.

Someone tell Hong Kong actor Jackie Chan, who, incredibly, believes that “we Chinese need to be controlled” (HT Yellow Menace). Such nonchalance is sadly not uncommon.

Freedom isn’t just another word, folks.

Thousands died for it on June 4, 1989:

Someday, God willing, China will be free.