Obama's plan for jobs on Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other coal producting states, and Obama's plan for dealing with the high cost of energy, including electricity generation.
An audiotape of an interview Barack Obama did in January 2008 with The San Francisco Chronicle has surfaced in the final days of the presidential campaign. On the tape Obama tells the interviewer how he will use environmenal laws to kill the Coal industry,
"so if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can ... It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."
Also says he's policy will cause price of electricity to skyrocket.
Now, why would Obama say that in San Francisco and not Pennsylvania? We've seen him do that before, right? Something about guns and religion.
And why did Newsweek take their story on the Pennsylvania campaign down Sunday after this story broke?
FactChecking McCain
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
Obama, Feb. 26: I will make sure that we renegotiate. … I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced.
But that's far from a threat to "close" markets to U.S. exports.
An expert from a pro-trade group agrees. "It's a stretch to take the heated comment from the Cleveland debate to pull out of NAFTA if it wasn't revised as indicative of a protectionist policy," Jeffrey Schott, a senior fellow and trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told FactCheck.org. "In any event, the position on NAFTA has since been clarified."
In fact, Obama has said he thinks it's unwise to repeal the trade deal, because to do so "would actually result in more job loss ... than job gains." And in a June interview with Fortune magazine, he stated that he didn't plan on pulling out of NAFTA. "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified," he said.
It's true that McCain has been a stronger advocate of free trade agreements than Obama, who supported the trade deal with Oman in 2006 and one with Peru in 2007 but opposed the one with Central America and another with Colombia. But saying he would "close" markets is nonsense.
Planet Plans
Finally, we note that McCain and the Republican delegates applied a different standard to the Republican nominee's lofty rhetoric than they did to Obama's.
McCain drew applause with this line:
McCain: We must use all resources and develop all technologies necessary to rescue our economy from the damage caused by rising oil prices and restore the health of our planet.
The previous evening, however, McCain's running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, ridiculed Obama for using similar high-sounding words:
Palin, Sept. 3: What does he actually seek to accomplish after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet?
That crack drew jeers and laughter. Perhaps Republicans see a distinction between "healing the planet" and "restor[ing] the health of our planet," but it escapes us.
Reprinted with permission from .
Sources
Obama, Barack. "Plan for a Healthy America." BarackObama.com, accessed 5 Sept. 2008.
Office of Management and Budget. "FY 2008 Appropriations Earmarks Summary," 28 January 2008.
Congressional Budget Office. "CBO's Baseline Budget Projections," March 2008.
Congressional Research Service. Oil and Gas Tax Subsidies: Current Status and Analysis. Washington: GPO, 2007.
"The Lexington Project." JohnMcCain.com, accessed 5 Sept. 2008.
"U.S. Imports by Country of Origin." U.S. Energy Information Administration, accessed 5 Sept. 2008.
"Spot Prices, Crude Oil in Dollars per Barrel." U.S. Energy Information Administration, accessed 5 Sept. 2008.
The New York Times. "Transcript, the Democratic Debate in Cleveland." 26 Feb. 2008.
Tapper, Jake. "Obama Knocks Clinton, but Wouldn't Ax NAFTA." ABC News, 24 Feb. 2008.
Easton, Nina. "Obama: NAFTA not so bad after all." Fortune Magazine, 18 June 2008.
Obama, Barack. "Why I Oppose CAFTA." Chicago Tribune, 30 June 2005.
Elliott, Philip. "Obama says rivals have failed." The Associated Press, 9 Oct. 2007.
"Remarks for Sen. Barack Obama: AFL-CIO." 2 April 2008.
www.barackobama.com
, Web site accessed 5 Sept. 2008.
with Viveca Novak, Lori Robertson, Joe Miller and Emi Kolawole
© 2008
Discuss