The State of Black America 2012

BY NISA ISLAM MUHAMMAD -STAFF WRITER- | LAST UPDATED: MAR 15, 2012 - 12:01:53 PM

2012 State of Black America

NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE Mar 7 2012

2012 State of Black America Report: Occupy the Vote to Educate, Employ & Empower Release of report followed by a town hall conversation with commentators and students. Welcome: Dr. Sidney Ribeau Howard University President Speakers: Janet Murguia President and CEO of the National Council of La Raza Benjamin Jealous President and Chief Executive Officer of the NAACP Marc Morial National Urban League President & CEO Panel: Keli Goff blogger, author and political analyst Kevin Powell activist, writer, public speaker, Nolan Rollins President & CEO, Urban League of Greater New Orleans Warren Ballentine attorney, host of the Warren Ballentine Show, motivational speaker Lennox Yearwood President and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus MODERATORS Marc Morial National Urban League President & CEO Jeff Johnson journalist, social activist and political commentator 7-9p Howard University Crampton Hall 2455 Sixth Street, NW For more information: http://www.nul.org/ http://www.iamempowered.com/

WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) - The state of Black America is simple according to the National Urban League president and CEO Marc Morial: “It’s under attack.”

Marc H. Morial, Urban League

The civil rights organization’s latest annual report details areas of Black life and most pressing concerns for 2012. Along with the economy, jobs, and education for all children, the major issue for this year is the vote. Thus the name of this year’s State of Black America report, “Occupy the Vote to Educate, Employ and Empower.”
“It’s no coincidence that a nationwide rollback in voting rights for America’s most vulnerable citizens is happening just as elected officials mount unprecedented campaigns to slash investments in education and economic development,” said Mr. Morial.

“As the nation struggles toward a financial recovery, public investments in education, job training and job growth are more vital than ever. Yet those very investments are targeted for sacrifice in favor of diverting more and more of the nation’s resources to those at the very top of the economic pyramid.”

“At the same time, a coordinated effort is underway to exclude from the political process the very citizens whose futures hang in the balance,” he said.

The Urban League took the report public in a March 7 town hall meeting, webcast live and covered by CSPAN at Howard University. It was moderated by Mr. Morial and award-winning journalist Jeff Johnson.

Students, community members and Urban League professionals engaged a panel of leaders and economic experts including activist and writer Kevin Powell, radio host Warren Ballentine, Chanelle Hardy of the National Urban League Policy Institute; Nolan Rollins, president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater New Orleans; Leslie Fenwick, Ph.D., dean of the Howard University School of Education and author and political analyst Kelli Goff.

Voter Rights

NAACP head Benjamin Jealous connected the high rates of incarceration for Blacks and Latinos with voter suppression.

“Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately incarcerated even though they are not disproportionately more likely to commit crimes,” he said. “In 1906 Virginia enacted a law that said ex-felons can’t vote. The law was racist then and the law is racist now.”

“Florida enacted a law that pushed 500,000 people off the (voter) rolls. They were mostly Black and Brown.”

Artwork from the Muhammad Speaks Newspaper shows dejected Blacks exiting closed American factories, an image presented in the 1960s fulfilled today. 'This is our lunch counter moment. If we don’t get it right, it will have catastrophic consequences in the next 10 years.' —Rev. Lennox Yearwood, president and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus

Melanie Campbell, of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, said Americans are witnessing the largest voting rights assault since passage of the Voting Rights Act.

The report includes two articles that detail the assault on voter rights—“Minority Voter Participation: Reviving Past and Present Barriers to the Polls” by Rep. Bobby C. Scott and “The Rise and Fall and Rise Again of Jim Crow Laws” by Rev. Lennox Yearwood, president and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus.

“This is our lunch counter moment. If we don’t get it right, it will have catastrophic consequences in the next 10 years,” said Rev. Yearwood.

Defense of the right to vote remains critical as legislation that would require a government-issued photo ID, shorten voting hours, curtail early voting, and/or impose absurd penalties limiting the registration process is pending in 27 states, said analysts.

Education

“Young people today have not had access to African American teachers as generations before. They’ve missed the models of intellectual authorities,” said Dr. Fenwick. “Seventy-three percent of inner city teachers are White … the majority of public school children are Black and Latino.”

She explained that the children have little if any access to diverse teachers and said there is a need for Black educational leadership. Research shows Black students with Black teachers are less likely to be targeted for special education, less likely to be suspended and less likely to be expelled. They are also more likely to be targeted for gifted and talented programs, said experts.

The report includes articles by Dr. Steve Perry, “Real Reform is Getting Kids One Step Closer to Quality Schools” and “Sacrifice If You Must-The Reward is Clear” by Gregory Carr, Ph.D. and J.D.

“The current challenges facing American higher education places students from Black, Brown and poor communities at a crossroads nearly 60 years since the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision,” wrote Dr. Carr.

“Faced with the prospect of taking on mounting post- secondary debt but seemingly facing uncertain prospects of employment with only a high school diploma, many of these students ask themselves, should I go to college?”

His answer is an unequivocal, “Yes.”

“The fight to fund schools equally, make college tuition affordable, economically revitalize impoverished communities, or to continue to improve access to affordable health care for all Americans will not be won without increased civic participation,” Mr. Morial commented.

The State of Black America report, issued annually by the National Urban League since 1976, includes an “Equality Index,” which compares Black and Latino progress to White Americans on issues such as income, homeownership, health insurance and education.

The 2012 National Urban League Equality Index documents significantly reduced minority voter registration and voter participation in the 2010 mid-term elections. This lost ground in civic engagement offset modest gains in education and health.

For Blacks, this resulted in an essentially unchanged 2012 Equality Index of 71.5 percent and for Latinos, a decline from 76.7 percent in 2011 to 76.1 percent in 2012.

Jeff Johnson of BET fame encouraged the panel to offer solutions.

“Change some of the ways we describe our situation,” offered Mr. Powell. “We have to have a level of compassion for our people …We’ve abandoned the masses of our people. We must challenge our people with love.”

“Find something to be engaged in. We all have a responsibility. … You are a leader. You have a responsibility to go to communities and show people how to be. Change the direction of the conversation, create institutions and be accessible. Love the people.”

Start an economic movement, said nationally syndicated radio host Warren Ballentine. “Open accounts in Black banks. The government won’t save us. The only ones who will save us is us.”

State of Black America Report  Mar 10, 2012

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C-SPAN | Washington Journal

Marc Morial discussed the findings of the National Urban League's State of Black America report and what it means for the U.S. socially, politically, and economically. He responded to telephone calls and electronic communications. Topics included the recent new voting identification state laws in various states, and the 2012 elections,  

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BACHMANN HITS BACK AT CRITICS REGARDING HER LETTER ABOUT MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AND ITS U.S. TENTACLES

• Posted on July 19, 2012 at 11:12am by  Jonathon M. Seidl
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Michele Bachmann refuses to back down from her criticism of the Muslim Brotherhood and its tentacles within the United States. The congresswoman from Minnesota joined Glenn Beck on radio Thursday morning and continued to herald the warning about the Brotherhood. She also hit back at her critics, who have panned her for a letter she sent last Friday to the Inspectors General of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“After the Fort Hood tragedy, a report was issued that said the real problem in our government is that we are not teaching FBI agents or our military to recognize radical Islam.  So that’s what we need to do,” Bachmann told Beck. “We need to teach about it.”

But recent developments — such as taking such curriculum from training programs — has made that nearly impossible. That prompted her to write the letter with four other members of Congress. And it hasn’t been welcomed.

Michele Bachmann (Getty Images)

“Never before in the history of the country have we seen this level of leaks coming out, but at the same time there’s also a parallel track of influence from the Muslim Brotherhood in the highest levels of the federal government, and we think that we need to get answers to these questions,” Bachmann said in the interview.  “And that’s the purpose of our letters.  We’re asking that the inspectors general answer these questions, and Keith Ellison is trying to shut this, these questions down from getting addressed.”

Ellison, Bachmann’s fellow Rep. from Minnesota, has called Bachmann’s inquiry “nonsense.”

Bachmann also responded to those such as John McCain who have criticized her for raising questions about the wife of disgraced Rep. Anthony Weiner, Huma Abedin. Abedin is a top aide to Hillary Clinton, but she has family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

“She is the chief aid for the ‑‑ to the Secretary of State, and we quoted from a document, and this has been well reported all across Arab media, that her father ‑‑ her late father who’s now deceased was a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, Bachmann explained. She continued:

Her brother was a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, and her mother was a part of what’s called the Muslim Sisterhood.  It would be, we have requirements to get a high level security clearance.  One thing that the government looks at are your associations, and in particular your family associations.  And this applies to everyone.  It would be the same that is true with me.  If my family members were associated with Hamas, a terrorist organization, that alone could be sufficient to disqualify me from getting a security clearance.  So all we did is ask, did the federal government look into her family associations before she got a high level security clearance.

“And it’s not an unreasonable thing to ask seeing that this president and this administration has ‑‑ didn’t know ‑‑ apparently didn’t know that Van Jones was the founding ‑‑ one of the founding members of a radical revolutionary, anti‑American, Communist organization, and he’s in the White House,” Beck responded.

“But you’re not saying that she is compromised?  he asked later. “You’re saying have we looked into this, right?”

“That’s right,” she responded. “That‘s all we’re saying because we did not infer that she is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood or that she’s working on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

You might be wondering: What is all this Muslim Brotherhood stuff about? Luckily, we have you covered. In April, Beck aired an extensive documentary that detailed the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in America. It was called “Rumors of War III: Target U.S.” You can read up on the background in our extensive piece here. TheBlaze’s national security expert, Buck Sexton, alsooffers some background:

As ROW III shows, the problem starts with America’s current conception of the radical Islamist enemy, stretches up to the most senior reaches of government, and has allowed a number of strategic– some even say existential– threats to magnify against the United States and its citizens.

Rumors of War III makes the case that international Islamist organizations have learned to thrive in the United States as part of a coordinated Psychological Operation. Hardline Islamist groups– including Muslim Brotherhood affiliates and their mouthpieces in the western media– have learned to code their language and make arguments about the intent of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood that are seemingly palatable to the average American.

[...]

[...] [T]hose on the front lines of combating Islamic terrorism are increasingly unable to be frank in their analysis or open with their conclusions. Somewhere along the way, a series of highly-placed advisers to the White House, Department of Defense, and other crucial government agencies have apparently convinced senior U.S. leadership that the mere discussion of radical Islam is inherently an offense to all people of Islamic faith.

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You can watch the full documentary by signing up for GBTV here.

This is a breaking story. Updates will be added.

Listening Post

Blowing the whistle on Obama's America

Do the threats facing whistleblowers under Obama's presidency mean Americans know less about what their government does? Listening Post Last Modified: 08 Jun 2012 17:09e

Obama the candidate praised the 'courage and patriotism' of some whistleblowers - but Obama the president seems to have taken a different view [EPA]

This week: A Listening Post special - Whistleblowing and the US media. Four years ago, on the campaign trail, candidate Barack Obama shared his views on whistleblowers. He said: "Often the best source of information about waste, fraud and abuse in government is a government employee committed to public integrity, willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism ... should be encouraged rather than stifled." As president, the reality has been very different. On his watch, six whistleblowers have been charged under the Espionage Act for allegedly mishandling classified information. That is twice as many as all past presidents combined. The threat facing whistleblowers has implications in many areas, including defence, intelligence and national security. And then there is the impact it is having on the US media - as the sources dry up, so too do the stories and the American people are left knowing less and less about what their government is doing. In the first half of this full edition special, we blow the whistle on President Obama's America. Jesselyn Radack is a lawyer who worked as an ethics adviser for the US Department of Justice. In 2001, Radack revealed that the FBI questioned John Walker Lindh - 'the American Taliban' - illegally and that his so-called confession might not stand up in a court of law. Radack was heavily criticised and became the target of a Federal criminal 'leak investigation'. After a year she resigned. In the second half of the show, Radack talks to us about the impact whistleblowing has had on US journalism and what news organisations are doing about it.

Sean Hannity George Zimmerman Interview: Fox News Host Gets First Sitdown With Trayvon Martin Shooter

Hannity Exclusive
George Zimmerman, the man who made headlines for killing a Florida teen, Trayvon Martin earlier this year joins Sean tonight on FOX News for an exclusive interview to share his side of the story. “This is your first interview,” Sean asked Mr. Zimmerman, “What would you like to tell them, the family?” “I’d like to tell them I’m sorry,” offered Zimmerman, “I can’t imagine what this must feel like and I pray for them daily.” Sean has covered every aspect of this story since it first broke this past February and had even earlier in the year spoken privately with George Zimmerman in an interview that he kept mostly to himself. “I’m going to keep the conversation private as I said I would except for a few tid-bits that I’m allowed to share.” Sean told the audience last April, “I’ve said from the beginning that we don’t know what happened.” Credit should go to Sean for s earching for the truth in what has been a very emotionally charged media frenzy. You can watch a brief excerpt from Sean’s interview here.

The Huffington Post  |  By Jack Mirkinson Posted: 07/18/2012 12:27 pm Updated: 07/18/2012 12:46 pm

Sean Hannity has landed the first interview with Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman.
Hannity interviewed both Zimmerman and his attorney, Mark O'Mara, for an episode that will air on Wednesday night. A press release said that "Zimmerman will open up about what happened the night of Trayvon Martin’s death and his experience in the aftermath of the fatal shooting."
TVNewser was the first to report the news.
It's a definite coup for Hannity, though not an entirely surprising one. He spoke with Zimmerman off the record in April, when Zimmerman bucked the advice of his attorneys and got in touch with the Fox News host. Hannity refused to divulge the contents of their conversation. But he did say that he and his team had been pursuing an interview with Zimmerman for weeks in order to get "his side of the story." He also conducted a relatively sympathetic interview with Zimmerman's father.
Moreover, Hannity has opined that there might have been "some overcharging" in the case against Zimmerman, who was charged with second-degree murder.
News of the interview came a day after Fox News denied a report that Hannity had offered to pay Zimmerman's legal fees.

Sybrina Fulton, mother, of the late Trayvon Martin, addresses the media with Martin's father Tracy Martin, left, on Friday, March 16, 2012 in Orlando, Fla. Credit: David Manning for The Huffington Post

NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 21: Supporters of Trayvon Martin rally in Union Square during a 'Million Hoodie March' in Manhattan on March 21, 2012 in New York City. Thousands of protesters turned out to demonstrate against the killing of the black unarmed teenager by a white neighborhood watch captain. The protesters marched through the streets after holding a large rally in Union Square. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Mitt Romney's Own 2002 Testimony Undermines Bain Departure Claim

Posted: 07/12/2012 6:54 pm Updated: 07/13/2012 8:51 am

WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney's repeated claim that he played no part in executive decision-making related to Bain Capital after 1999 is false, according to Romney's own testimony in June 2002, in which he admitted to sitting on the board of the LifeLike Co., a dollmaker that was a Bain investment during the period.

Romney has consistently insisted that he was too busy organizing the 2002 Winter Olympics to take part in Bain business between 1999 and that event. But in the testimony, which was provided to The Huffington Post, Romney noted that he regularly traveled back to Massachusetts. "[T]here were a number of social trips and business trips that brought me back to Massachusetts, board meetings, Thanksgiving and so forth," he said.

Romney's sworn testimony was given as part of a hearing to determine whether he had sufficient residency status in Massachusetts to run for governor.

Romney testified that he "remained on the board of the Staples Corporation and Marriott International, the LifeLike Corporation" at the time.

Yet in the Aug. 12, 2011, federal disclosure form filed as part of his presidential bid, he said, "Mr. Romney retired from Bain Capital on February 11, 1999 to head the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way."

Bain, a private equity firm, held a stake in the LifeLike Co. until the end of 2001, including during the period in which Romney claimed to have no business involvement with Bain entities. Bain had heavily invested in LifeLike, a company that Romney identified personally as an opportunity, in 1996 and sold its shares in late 2001. His involvement with LifeLike contradicts his assertion that he had no involvement with Bain business. His testimony is supported by his 2001 Massachusetts State Ethics Commission filing, in which he lists himself as a member of LifeLike's board.

Romney has long said that he took a leave of absence from Bain because the work of organizing the 2002 Winter Olympics was so grueling, which has allowed him to deny responsibility for Bain activities during 1999 and 2002.

His activities during that period also included Staples board meetings: "I returned for most of those meetings. Others I attended by telephone if I could not return."

Bain was involved with Staples early in its life, taking the company public in 1989. Romney used his Bain position to obtain a seat on the board, which he held into 2002. He regularly cites the jobs that Staples created as reflecting positively on Bain's record.

The Boston Globe on Thursday blew a giant hole in Romney's claim that he left the private equity firm in 1999. The Globe reported that Bain's own filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission suggest that Romney remained deeply tied to the company until sometime in 2002.

Bain described Romney in 2001 SEC filings as the "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president." Another form stated that he owned 100 percent of the company in 2002 and received a six-figure salary from Bain in 2001 and 2002. His listed title: "Executive."

Earlier reporting on the topic by Talking Points Memo and Mother Jones had already begun to chip away at the Romney narrative.

The Romney campaign is still sticking with its candidate's story.

"The article is not accurate," spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement released to reporters following the Globe story. "As Bain Capital has said, as Governor Romney has said, and as has been confirmed by independent fact checker multiple times, Governor Romney left Bain Capital in February of 1999 to run the Olympics and had no input on investments or management of companies after that point."

Yet Romney's sworn testimony appears to back up the SEC filings and contradict his personal disclosure forms submitted to Massachusetts officials in 2002, in which he said that he retired from Bain on Feb. 11, 1999.

Romney's lawyer at the Massachusetts hearing said that Romney's work in the private sector continued "unabated" while he ran the Olympics: "He succeeded in that three-year period in restoring confidence in the Olympic Games, closing that disastrous deficit and staging one of the most successful Olympic Games ever to occur on U.S. soil. Now while all that was going on, very much in the public eye, what happened to his private and public ties to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? And the answer is they continued unabated just as they had."

Instead of leaving in 1999, Romney suggested in his testimony that he only left Bainafter the Olympics in 2002: “I left on the basis of a leave of absence indicating that I, by virtue of that title, would return at the end of the Olympics to my employment at Bain Capital, but subsequently decided not to do so and entered into a departure agreement with my former partners. I use that in the colloquial sense, not legal sense, but my former partners."

The opening statement delivered by Romney's lawyer in the 2002 hearing said Romney "continued to serve on the board of directors of a significant Massachusetts company and to return here for most of its board meetings."

In a statement released Thursday, Bain defended Romney. "Mitt Romney left Bain Capital in February 1999 to run the Olympics and has had absolutely no involvement with the management or investment activities of the firm or with any of its portfolio companies since the day of his departure," the statement reads. "Due to the sudden nature of Mr. Romney's departure, he remained the sole stockholder for a time while formal ownership was being documented and transferred to the group of partners who took over management of the firm in 1999. Accordingly, Mr. Romney was reported in various capacities on SEC filings during this period."

UPDATE: 9:15 p.m. -- The Romney campaign responded by focusing on Romney's involvement with Bain itself, and argued that the state Ballot Law Commission validated the argument that Romney was not involved in day-to-day Bain matters.

"After extensive hearings the Ballot Law Commission came to the same conclusion as numerous independent fact checkers in finding that Mitt Romney ended his active employment with Bain Capital in 1999," said Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg. "Every public judgment, including a unanimous one from the Ballot Law Commission, has confirmed this fact."

Henneberg called the controversy over Romney's employment at Bain "just another distraction from a desperate campaign that is willing to say anything to divert attention from President Obama’s failed record in office.”

However, the purpose of the Ballot Law Commission inquiry was to determine Romney's residency, not whether he had done any part-time work on behalf of Bain. Indeed, in two days of testimony, the Democratic lawyer didn't question Romney about his role at Bain, as the issue wasn't a live one. That question only arose in recent years when Romney categorically denied any active involvement with Bain.

In addition, the Romney campaign's response does not address whether by sitting on LifeLike's board until 2001, Romney's 2011 disclosure form statement that he had "not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way" was false.

Is GM Becoming ‘China Motors’?

Posted on June 8, 2012

Q: Is General Motors becoming ‘China Motors’ using taxpayer dollars?
A: No. The restructured GM is still based in Detroit and is still one-third owned by the U.S. government. But it sells nearly as many cars in China as in the U.S. and has continued expanding operations there.
FULL QUESTION
How much of this is true?

Subject: Video – No more GM cars for me!
WHAT AN EYE-OPENER!
No more GM cars for me.
Even if this were only half true it would light a fire under you. Trouble is, it’s ALL true !!!

YES, YOUR TAX MONEY AT WORK, THANKS TO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION !!!!!

Published on May 22, 2012 by MarinePatriot0311

http://www.Liberty.com Cadillac, a symbol of "American Freedom & Prosperity" division of General Motors, is quickly turning Communist Chinese. With the agreement by Cadillac to pay for the production expenses of a Chinese Communist Party propaganda film, the Cadillac brand now stands for something quite different: the appeasement of a power hostile to the United States in the name of financial gain.

GM CEO Daniel Akerson describes China as the "key to [GM"s] success. Our commitment to work in China, with China, and for China remains strong and focused on the future." President Obama has been using GM in his election ads as one of the "successful" bailouts. GM was one of the auto companies receiving 2009 federal bailout money.

The film GM is funding, with an English title of " Birth of a Party or The Great Achievement of the Founding of the Party ", is due to be released in China on June 15. Cadillac hopes to market its luxury cars to Chinese Communist Party leaders. Chinese Communist leaders can drive the luxury car that Communist President Obama drives.

Cadillac lost its luster as the top vehicule symbol of status to other makes of cars long ago, after decades of legendary poor workmanship and terrible gas mileage. Cadillac can now add to its list of misjudgments paying for a film commemorating the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, a political organization which has been responsible for the deaths of many millions of human beings whose only crime was that they may have disagreed with the Party.

The action of Cadillac is not merely an act of kowtow in the hope of profit. It is the reflection of a much wider strategy by China to establish dominance - economically, socially, politically, and militarily. In turn, this dominance is in the name not of Chinese civilization, but of an ideology introduced into general Chinese society by the Communist Party of China.

Cadillac's payment for this communist propaganda film occurs within the context of a single-party State in which all activities are monitored by a large and efficient secret police. The Chinese Communist Party is able to lay out courses of action that are to occur over many years.

FULL ANSWER

Several readers have asked us about the claims stated in a viral video that criticizes General Motors’ expanding operations in China. The video has received more than half a million views on YouTube since it was posted May 4. The narrator, a man who gives his name as Vince Wade, asks: “Did we bail out GM so that it could become a Chinese company?”
It’s a fair question. The short answer is, “No.”

Still American

GM is still a U.S.-based multinational auto company, incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Detroit. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, about 33 percent of the stock in GM is still owned by the U.S. Treasury as a result of a taxpayer-assisted bankruptcy and downsizing in 2009.
But the company sells cars in more than 120 countries and accounted for nearly 12 percent of all car and truck sales worldwide last year (11.9 percent, according to GM’s annual report). It’s also true that China is now the largest market for car sales on earth. Total car sales in China surpassed those in the U.S. in 2009. China retained the lead in 2011, and that lead is expected to grow in the future.
So like it or not, the world’s automakers have been drawn to this huge and growing market, and GM has been particularly successful there. The video’s narrator clearly doesn’t like it.
His video asks, “Was the bailout a mistake?” And he goes on to quote an account criticizing GM’s Cadillac brand for supposedly currying favor with “the underworld mob that runs China.”
We won’t offer opinions on whether or not GM or any other company should be doing business in China, or on other controversial issues on which the narrator takes a stand. Our job is to look at the facts.
Overall, the video gives a one-sided picture. And on a couple of points it misleads. Here we offer a more complete and accurate picture, so readers may decide for themselves how they feel about GM’s dealings in China.

GM Expanding

Narrator Wade states that “GM has been shrinking its U.S. operations, while it’s aggressively expanding and investing in the People’s Republic of China.” But the fact is GM is currently expanding in both places.
It’s true that GM shrank much of its U.S. operations — shedding old brands and dealerships and many workers — when it went through bankruptcy in 2009. The alternative was to go out of business entirely.
But since then, the “new” GM has enjoyed expanding sales and operations. For example, it  announced in January that it is building a new, $200 million stamping plant in Arlington, Texas. And it states: “Since June 2009, the company has announced more than $6.9 billion of investment to upgrade or expand operations in 12 states, creating or retaining more than 17,600 jobs.”
It’s true that GM also has been expanding in China — but that was true long before the bailout. The “old” GM (the one that went bankrupt) was the largest foreign car maker in China in 2008, battling for supremacy there with Volkswagen.
The “new” GM has continued that overseas success. It sold a record 231,183 vehicles in China in May, up 21 percent from a year earlier, for example. That compares with 245,256 vehicles sold in the United States, up 11 percent from a year earlier and the highest in 33 months.

Cost to Taxpayers

The video is also misleading as to the cost of taxpayer support. It cites a figure of $80 billion, which actually covers the government’s peak disbursements for both GM and Chrysler, as the narrator mentions in passing. But the net cost of the entire bailout is currently estimated to end up being $19 billion (by the Congressional Budget Office) to $22 billion (by the U.S. Treasury).
Most of that $80 billion has been recovered through interest payments, loan repayments and sale of government-owned stock. And of course, some portion of that is attributable to bailing out Chrysler.
Taxpayers still own about 33 percent of GM stock, according to CBO (other calculations put the total closer to 32 percent). Either way, the final cost of the bailout depends largely on whether the price of GM stock rises or falls between now and when the government decides to sell its shares.
So the better GM does, the less U.S. taxpayers will be hurt. And a key part of GM’s global business strategy is selling and manufacturing cars in China. As then-GM CEO Rick Wagoner said in 2008: “The automaker that gets China right will be the future leader of the industry.”

Global Auto Realities

Much of the video is devoted to showing GM Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Daniel F. Akerson explaining GM’s overseas operations to reporters in Shanghai in February 2011. Akerson noted that almost “seven out of 10 of our vehicles were made outside the United States” and that “we have 11 joint ventures” with government-owned Chinese companies (which the narrator later describes as partnerships with the “autocratic, anti-Democracy, Communist government of China”).
Akerson goes on to say, “We’re involved in vehicle manufacturing, sales, distribution, engineering design” and other auto-related businesses. He also said GM operates 11 assembly plants and four power train plants in eight cities in China.
That may sound surprising to some viewers, but the fact is that building and selling cars outside the home country is standard for multinational auto firms today. Japanese and German firms have many manufacturing facilities in the U.S., for example.
In fact, the top 10 “American-made” cars as ranked by Cars.com include three made by Toyota and two made by Honda (plus three made by GM, one by Ford and one by Jeep, a division of Chrysler, which is still U.S.-based but mostly owned by the Italian auto firm Fiat.) The single most “American” car made and sold in the U.S. today is the 2012 Toyota Avalon, with 85 percent domestic content (meaning parts made in either the U.S. or Canada), according to ratings published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Two GM passenger vans are tied for second, with 82 percent domestic content. (Toyota’s Matrix has 95 percent domestic content, more than any other vehicle sold in the U.S., but is assembled in Canada.)
GM’s facilities sprawl across the globe. Besides its plants in the U.S. and China, it is the third-largest car maker in Korea. It makes cars in Brazil, has owned Britain’s Vauxhall brand since 1925, and still owns the troubled Opel brand, manufactured in Germany, Poland and Britain, to cite a partial list.

Other Issues

Some of the more than nine-minute video is devoted to flaying Cadillac for its sponsorship of what the narrator describes as “a propaganda film, celebrating the anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China.” That much is true enough, and the video includes shots of the premiere with the Cadillac logo sharing the stage with the party’s hammer-and-sickle symbol.
But then the video quotes extensively from a story in the Epoch Times newspaper, in which the reporter cites a “suspicion” that GM was marketing Cadillacs to top party officials to curry their favor. But the full text of the story shows the reporter prefaced that by saying, “I have no proof.” So that speculation may or may not be accurate.
A statement that China’s leaders constitute an “underworld mob” — also quoted — is the opinion of the Epoch Times writer, Matthew Robertson. As the video narrator mentions, the Epoch Times leadership has numerous ties to the dissident Falun Gong movement. Followers were widely persecuted by the Chinese government, and that may color the newspaper’s reporting.
Another issue raised by the video is the sale of the Saginaw, Mich.-based GM supplier Nexteer to a Chinese firm. But the Wall Street Journal reported in February that the deal has turned out pretty well for U.S. workers: “Today, few people in town are wringing their hands about the Chinese. Inside a 59-year-old factory at Nexteer’s sprawling complex, contractors are ripping out antiquated machine lines and installing new equipment to produce an electronic steering system for the next generation of GM’s large pickup trucks and SUVs. The company, for years known as Saginaw Steering Gear, has hired more than 100 engineers in Saginaw last year and is looking for 80 more this year.”
The narrator is critical of both President Barack Obama and the probable Republican nominee Mitt Romney. He states that two big Romney supporters profited from the bailout. That’s based on a report by freelance investigative reporter and author Greg Palast. We can’t vouch for its accuracy. Palast is a veteran fraud investigator with an MBA from the University of Chicago. But as a journalist, he also has his critics.
We of course take no position on whether GM’s operations in China are a good thing or a bad thing, or whether the GM bailout should have been handled differently, or at all. We also take no position on whether car buyers should boycott GM, as the writer of one version of an email suggests in the headline. We only note that there are far fewer “tax dollars at work” than this video suggests, and that — like it or not — the auto business is global, China is the biggest market for cars on the planet, and if GM doesn’t build and sell cars there then others will. So the things this video finds distressing are happening with or without the bailout.
– Brooks Jackson

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GM to Add 600 China Dealerships

 Updated April 23, 2012, 2:15 p.m. ET

By SHARON TERLEP

BEIJING—General Motors Co. GM +1.14% plans to add 600 dealerships in China this year, about a 20% increase, as the auto maker looks to bolster its presence here amid growing competition and an economic-growth slowdown.
Chief Executive Dan Akerson on Monday outlined steps GM is taking to boost sales and market share in China, where it is the largest foreign auto maker.
The addition of 600 dealerships would bring the company's dealer network in China to 3,500 stores, up from 2,900 at the end of 2011. At that size, China's dealers would begin to rival the company's U.S. network of 4,400.
GM is adding new models and factory capacity and expanding a technology center near its China headquarters in Shanghai, which will soon be its second-largest global development center. The largest is in Warren, Mich., near its Detroit headquarters.
Like GM, many of the world's major auto makers are expanding in China, concentrating on a market expected to grow to more than 30 million vehicle sales by the end of the decade from 18.5 million last year.
But China auto sales fell 2% last year after a stretch of explosive growth, raising questions about demand.
Mr. Akerson said he is confident the market will grow over the long term.
"If you didn't believe in this country and its growth potential, you'd have feet of clay—we don't," he said, speaking to reporters at the Beijing auto show.