FactCheck: Obama Ad Distorts McCain's Role in Job Loss | Newsweek Politics: Campaign 2008

Distorting the DHL Deal

An AFL-CIO flier and Obama campaign ads say that McCain cost Ohioans 8,000 jobs. We say that's a distortion of the record.

By Joe Miller | factcheck.org

Aug 15, 2008 | Updated: 12:02 p.m. ET Aug 15, 2008

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Summary
Ads from the AFL-CIO and the Obama campaign claim that McCain is partly to blame for the loss of more than 8,000 jobs in Ohio. They paint a false picture.

There's at least some truth in both ads: German-based DHL announced a deal that could result in 8,200 lost jobs in Wilmington, Ohio. And McCain did in fact oppose an amendment that would have kept DHL from buying Wilmington-based Airborne Express. McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, was also a DHL lobbyist charged with easing the merger through the Senate.

But the ads go too far. Some statements about McCain are misleading and some of the inferences the ads invite are unsubstantiated:

The ads charge that McCain opposition to a 2003 amendment helped DHL and amounted to turning his back on workers. That's misleading. McCain said he opposed a version of the amendment because it was a special project inserted into an unrelated bill, not to help DHL. And the Teamsters union praised the merger at the time, saying that it would lead to more jobs. And at first, more jobs indeed followed.

The ads also imply that the DHL merger is a direct cause of the job losses in Ohio, which we find to be both unlikely and unsubstantiated. Airborne Express had laid off 2,000 employees before the merger, and analysts at the time said that the struggling carrier would need to make expensive investments in its international infrastructure to remain competitive.

Analysis
The AFL-CIO and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama are blaming John McCain for the loss of more than 8,000 jobs in southwestern Ohio. The AFL-CIO mailer is the most explicit, saying that "McCain helped cut a deal that sent over 8,000 jobs to a foreign-owned company." Obama's television ad, which began airing on Aug. 14, charges that "John McCain helped pave the way for foreign-owned DHL to take over an American shipping company." An Obama radio ad, which began airing in Ohio over the weekend, repeats the message that McCain "used his influence in the Senate to help foreign-owned DHL buy a U.S. company and gain control over the jobs that are now on the chopping block in Ohio."

The Backstory
In 2003, DHL, a company owned by Deutsche Post (the German equivalent of the U.S. Postal Service) announced that it would purchase the ground fleet of Seattle-based Airborne Express. The merger gave DHL a fleet of more than 15,000 trucks, as well as ownership of Airborne's Wilmington, Ohio, hub, which consisted of a sorting facility and the world's largest privately owned airport.

Legal challenges from United Parcel Services and FedEx prevented DHL from purchasing Airborne's air freight service. That's because federal law prohibits foreign ownership of any U.S. airline. As a result of those legal challenges, DHL had to sell the airline it had already owned to American investors. That airline became ASTAR Air Cargo. Moreover, when DHL purchased Airborne Express, it had to spin off the air cargo portion into a separate business, ABX Air, which remained under the ownership of the original Airborne Express stockholders.

McCain wants to take credit if a company comes in that supposedly bring new jobs. Then he should be equally willing to acknowledge that he brought in the employer who was not committed to this market. He should connect himself with DHL when they leave as much as when they arrive. Do I smell hypocrisy?

McCain and Republicans want the big players in the market, but fail to work as hard on updating the tax code to penalize firms who move offshore. If McCain spent as much time in Congress as he has hob-nobbing with Petreaus and his pro-Bush buddies overseas, more might have been done to save jobs in the US. Not a big work ethic for him - missing at so many votes.

No distortion of the facts by McCain's opposition - just some heated criticism of the sort McCain's own campaign has been flinging non-stop in Obama's direction. They often say - don't dish it out if youcan't take it...

"Does either guy share your values" is not exactly the best question to ask about any candidate for the simple reason that some people's "values" are not what governs everybody - the Constitution is what is supposed to govern everybody. This is the problem with "values voting": "values voting" is nothing more than a euphemism for "religious voting" since almost all people's values come from their religions. Conveniently for us, most religions share a set of common values.

The problem is that not all religions share the same exact values, of course. How does society address a difference in religious values that affect society? It defers to the Constitution, of course, and the Constitution allows freedom of religion except when that freedom infringes on the rights of other citizens to live freely. This dynamic should easily dictate the government's position on such disagreeable religious topics as gay marriage; sadly, however, because of the rise of "values voting," it does not. When we start trying to pass laws based strictly on religious values - that is, legislating morality by rule of the religious majority - then we are not adhering to the Constitution, which provides equal protection under the law to people of all religions or non-religions. Let us get back to the matter of homosexuality then: if we ban so-called gay marriage, we are doing nothing more than forcing our religious values on everybody else - including those who do not share our religious values - and thus denying them equal protection to pursue their happiness. And laws such as ones that ban gay marriage - which has never been shown to be detrimental to other citizens' constitutional rights or society itself - do not protect citizens from those who might interfere with our rights; they merely DENY some citizens one of the rights that almost every other citizen takes for granted. The only thing gay marriage has proven to be is an act (or just an idea in most cases) that is offensive to the religious beliefs of certain citizens - but nothing more, and certainly not detrimental enough to society as a whole to warrant a law forbidding it! (By the way: proponents of such a law proclaim that banning gay marriage would be protecting something - "the sanctity of marriage," that is - but I do not believe the Founding Fathers intended the Constitution to guarantee safety to abstract ideals such as the "sanctity of marriage." Does THAT end this silly little argument?)

The Founding Fathers had a very specific vision of government in mind: their government drew an extremely visible line between church & state and involved itself in the private lives of its citizens as little as possible. Thus, voting based on values - which is essentially passing laws based on your religious values because you are voting for "lawmakers" - is intrinsically incompatible with the Founding Fathers' vi

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Posted By: cmilesgervc @ 09/11/2008 4:53:55 PM

I've really heard enough of McCain's whining. It is ok for his false remarks on Obama and yes i feel McCain is clueless the majority of the time on the middle class folks he or Palin does not have to do without
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Posted By: dorfy @ 08/25/2008 5:52:47 PM

McCain wants to take credit if a company comes in that supposedly bring new jobs. Then he should be equally willing to acknowledge that he brought in the employer who was not committed to this market. He should connect himself with DHL when they leave as much as when they arrive. Do I smell hypocrisy?

McCain and Republicans want the big players in the market, but fail to work as hard on updating the tax code to penalize firms who move offshore. If McCain spent as much time in Congress as he has hob-nobbing with Petreaus and his pro-Bush buddies overseas, more might have been done to save jobs in the US. Not a big work ethic for him - missing at so many votes.

No distortion of the facts by McCain's opposition - just some heated criticism of the sort McCain's own campaign has been flinging non-stop in Obama's direction. They often say - don't dish it out if youcan't take it...
- Reply
- Report Abuse
Posted By: Murray Rizberg @ 08/18/2008 7:31:49 PM

"Does either guy share your values" is not exactly the best question to ask about any candidate for the simple reason that some people's "values" are not what governs everybody - the Constitution is what is supposed to govern everybody. This is the problem with "values voting": "values voting" is nothing more than a euphemism for "religious voting" since almost all people's values come from their religions. Conveniently for us, most religions share a set of common values.

The problem is that not all religions share the same exact values, of course. How does society address a difference in religious values that affect society? It defers to the Constitution, of course, and the Constitution allows freedom of religion except when that freedom infringes on the rights of other citizens to live freely. This dynamic should easily dictate the government's position on such disagreeable religious topics as gay marriage; sadly, however, because of the rise of "values voting," it does not. When we start trying to pass laws based strictly on religious values - that is, legislating morality by rule of the religious majority - then we are not adhering to the Constitution, which provides equal protection under the law to people of all religions or non-religions. Let us get back to the matter of homosexuality then: if we ban so-called gay marriage, we are doing nothing more than forcing our religious values on everybody else - including those who do not share our religious values - and thus denying them equal protection to pursue their happiness. And laws such as ones that ban gay marriage - which has never been shown to be detrimental to other citizens' constitutional rights or society itself - do not protect citizens from those who might interfere with our rights; they merely DENY some citizens one of the rights that almost every other citizen takes for granted. The only thing gay marriage has proven to be is an act (or just an idea in most cases) that is offensive to the religious beliefs of certain citizens - but nothing more, and certainly not detrimental enough to society as a whole to warrant a law forbidding it! (By the way: proponents of such a law proclaim that banning gay marriage would be protecting something - "the sanctity of marriage," that is - but I do not believe the Founding Fathers intended the Constitution to guarantee safety to abstract ideals such as the "sanctity of marriage." Does THAT end this silly little argument?)

The Founding Fathers had a very specific vision of government in mind: their government drew an extremely visible line between church & state and involved itself in the private lives of its citizens as little as possible. Thus, voting based on values - which is essentially passing laws based on your religious values because you are voting for "lawmakers" - is intrinsically incompatible with the Founding Fathers' vi