DEAR EDITOR:
Is it conceit or disdain for America that motivated our president to pick the socialist "Forward" campaign slogan? Did you know that Lenin, Stalin, Mao, all used the "Forward" political slogan in one form or the other? My opinion is that our president holds us to be easily misled and is enjoying the "Forward" joke.
President Bush gave the first bridge loans to GM while requiring a restructured business model. President Obama forced out GM's president Rick Wagoner, who did not necessarily believe that GM had to go into bankruptcy. The political commercials in which President Obama claims to be the savior of the auto industry do not mention President Bush or the opinions of Rick Wagoner.
President Obama's Auto Board violated normal bankruptcy processes and placed GM into a bankruptcy that offered less protection to many of the retired Packard/Delphi salary personnel and to the older retired IUE union members. Salary retirees got cheated out of their promised pensions and the 65 and older IUE/CWA retired union members lost their health insurance.
While GM has $30 billion in its accounts it owes $40 billion to our country. Obama is set to allow GM to invest $8 billion in manufacturing and jobs in China. During the Obama-led GM bankruptcy, 63,000 dealership workers were fired by Obama's auto board. Since that time, 4,500 workers have been added to the GM work force. Also, since January 2011, new GM stock has lost half its value and there are frequently financial gurus predicting another bankruptcy for "Government Motors."
Obama not only led GM into bankruptcy, but he has also bankrupted our nation. It was a $10.6 trillion national debt when he took office and after four years of his reckless spending we now owe $16 trillion on America's debt. That is more than $200,000 for a family of four.
Our president outsourced money and jobs to Fiskers Auto in Sweden. He allowed Chrysler to be sold to the Italians. His administration used stimulus money to place Chinese manufactured solar panels on the Sen. Simon Federal Building in Carbondale, Ill. Stimulus money was used to outsource jobs to Mexico for solar panels, to Great Britain for electric delivery trucks, and to South Korea, Japan, and Mexico for wind farm equipment. When the green agenda stimulus money was spent in this country it went to companies like the bankrupt Solyndra.
Additionally he stayed true to his radical agenda and 85,000 jobs are lost because of his failure to approve the Keystone pipeline. Coal workers in Ohio and West Virginia are laid off because of Obama's war on coal. Hundreds of generating plants are shutting down, thousands of jobs are gone forever and electricity prices are set to climb to painful heights.
Unemployment is higher. Jobs are being created at a lower wage. Income is down to $4,000 less than median wages in 1995. The number of created jobs is less than the number of jobs that have been lost in this recession.
Are we better off today than we were prior to Obama's presidency? Regardless of his motives he is a man whose ego allows him to think that we are better off as he ruins America.
John Richards
Warren