Is The SuperPAC Ad Regarding The Consequences of Bain Capital's Driving A Steel Plant Out of Business Fair?

Joe Soptic, the laid-off steel worker who publicly blamed Mitt Romney for his wife’s 2006 death after a company Bain Capital owned went bankrupt years after Romney left Bain, chose not to insure his wife at his next job as a custodian.



Soptic, who appeared on an Obama campaign conference call and in an Obama campaign commercial earlier this year, then in a television commercial produced by the pro-Obama Super-PAC Priorities USA this month, implied that losing his insurance after being laid off from GSA Steel caused his wife’s death.

Bain bought GSA Steel in 1993. Romney left Bain to work on the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 1999. The plant closed in 2001. Sopic’s wife Ilyona had insurance through her own employer until at least a year after Sopic lost his job. She was diagnosed with cancer and died in 2006. Sopic now says he doesn’t blame Romney for his wife’s death. That not what the Obama ad says, and it’s not what he said on the conference call.

This morning, we’ve learned that Soptic decided to pay other bills rather than purchase health insurance, a decision that would get him fined under Obamacare.

Mr. Soptic said that after he lost his job, he found work as a school custodian about six months later and had the option to put her on his insurance plan. But he opted not to, he said, because he could not afford the more than $350 monthly premium on the $25,000 salary he was making, on top of paying his mortgage and a daughter’s college tuition. Ilyona Soptic was diagnosed with cancer in 2006 and died that year.

$350? How much was the payment for your car or cars? How much is your cable bill? How much is your cell phone bill. Your daughter couldn’t have deferred a year or gotten a job and paid $350 a month of her own way? Now it’s everyone else’s fault, especially a guy who had already moved on?

People make bad decisions like this all the time. You look back and regret them. You wish you could change them. You sometimes even blame other people for them. Those things don’t make Sopic a villain. However, it takes a special kind of scumbag like Barack Obama, Obama’s deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter and Priorities USA strategist Bill Burton, to exploit those confused feelings for political gain.

Cutter says that the campaign and Priorities USA did not coordinate pushing this guy’s misleading and questionable story, but he’s wearing the same shirt in both television ads. Cutter now says she doesn’t know the specifics of his story, even though she led a conference call where he told the story a few months ago. These people are lying, vicious, dirty scumbags.

edited to correct SOPIC TO SOPTIC

Sununu: “The outsourcing issue really causes two problems for President Obama. One: It underscores his dishonesty. The ad they were running – which all the independent fact-checking groups have said is dishonest – ends with President Obama saying “I’m President Obama and I approve this message.“ It should say, “I’m President Obama and I approve this dishonest message.” And the second problem he has with outsourcing is that there is a huge amount of outsourcing which was driven by Obama policy. The money – the $500 million they gave to FISKAR – created jobs in Finland. The solar energy grants they gave created jobs in Mexico. The wind turbine grants they gave created jobs in Denmark. So, the point that I think is really interesting is that the outsourcing issue underscores how few smarts there are in this White House and in this Obama campaign – that they expose themselves to the response criticism that I think – unlike what Mr. Cilliza said – is going to end up making this a winning issue for Mitt Romney.

Mitchell: Isn't it a winning issue for the White House, fundamentally, granted that the PolitiFact folks and the Washington Post pointing out that the President's campaign ad on that issue had a lot of questions and a lot of questionable attacks?

Sununu: But they said it was wrong. A lot of questionable tactics is not right, it was wrong.

Mitchell: But the point is, that isn't Mitt Romney more vulnerable than the President on this issue because there still is -- the whole question of private equity of outsourcing. Yo could argue about when he left Bain Capital and whether he was still getting money from Bain Capital and what some of the companies in Bain were doing, companies that did end up working overseas and sending jobs overseas. But isn't it a bigger problem for Republicans than for the White House?

Sununu: No. When you've sent $500 million to Fisker and it goes to Finland immediately. When you send the solar money and it goes to Mexico. When you send the turbine money and it goes to Denmark. And we can go on all day. There is $29 billion worth of purchases that came out of this administration, outsourced jobs to foreign countries.

Mitt Romney outsourced zero --

Mitchell: Zero?

Sununu: Zero. He wasn't there when those issues came up.

Mitchell: Well, first of all the $29 billion are not all outsourced from the administration because ---

Sununu: Sure they are.

Mitchell: A lot of those jobs still remained here. There are jobs -- when you do a grant, governor, there are jobs here as well as overseas.

Sununu: [laughing] You're struggling, Andrea. You're struggling.

...

Sununu: You know, it’s interesting that the President again chooses to demonstrate why he has ruined this economy. He doesn’t understand why he is behind the eight ball with 8.2% unemployment. He’s behind the eight ball because those people who invest in jobs that want to put money into create jobs look at this administration and are scared to death of things like this tax and like overregulation. All he’s done with what he put out yesterday is convince them that if Obama is elected, they’re taking their investment money out of the country.
...

Sununu: "Well, he’s [Obama] doing to his Democratic party what he did when he sent up a budget and lost in the house by 414-0 and in the senate, 98-0. All he cares about is himself. He doesn’t care about the people that support him politically and frankly I think this is just a repetition of a desperate act by a president who wants to create class warfare. It’s why he’s going to lose."

Governor Romney today in Colorado also slammed our Out-Sourcer-in-Chief.

The gloves are on.

NOTORIOUS DEAR - Books are being written on it because it is so obvious!

Tracing Obama's Overseas Investments

Electric Cars

Obama handed over billions of dollars in loan guarantees and stimulus awards pursuant to his goal of putting one-million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. Much of that money ended up leaving our shores. A $2.4 billion stimulus program to support battery production sent nearly half of its money to foreign firms, including two South Korean companies that used their awards to hire foreign nationals in Michigan to do work that Americans easily could have done. In the end, despite all the money Obama handed out, electric vehicle sales have lagged and The Washington Post deemed his goal of one million electric cars "overly optimistic."
Wind Farms

Obama's stimulus included over $8.5 billion in grants for wind farms that flowed overseas, despite Congressional criticism from both sides of the aisle. In total, over half of the money went to either foreign developers or foreign wind turbine manufacturers, creating thousands of jobs overseas with money that was supposed to create jobs within the United States. Even worse, hundreds of millions of dollars went to wind farms that began construction before the stimulus was passed. The end result of all this spending: the wind energy industry lost 10,000 jobs last year.
Manufacturing TaxCredits

As Obama was doling out over $2.3 billion in clean energy manufacturing tax credits that were supposed to create jobs in America, $880 million went to foreign firms. Worse still, some of those same recipients are now closing up shop and shipping jobs overseas.
Loan Guarantees

Remember Solyndra? The problems with Obama's loan guarantee program don't end there. The largest recipient of Obama's program to jumpstart green energy projects was the Spanish Company Abengoa, which took in $2.7 billion in loan guarantees for three of its projects. Other projects importing foreign-made solar panels are, much in the same way as Fisker Automotive, choosing to make their products overseas.