Romney Endorser Corrects Mitt On Auto Rescue: ‘No One Could Have’ Saved The Industry Except The Government

By Travis Waldron/Think Progress

Mitt Romney’s renewed opposition to the rescue that saved the American auto industry, which came in the form of yet another editorial announcing his desire to “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” was immediately slammed by auto industry insiders, reporters who covered the rescue, and even publications that had once taken his same position.

Michigan Rep. Fred Upton (R), who endorsed Romney, has now joined that chorus, telling Western Michigan University’s WMUK radio that turning to the private sector to rescue Detroit as Romney advocated was never an option:

HOST: He wrote an op-ed for the Detroit News in which he said it is good news that U.S. auto companies are back but he questioned the manner in which it was done, the so-called auto bailout. This was a fight that you were knee deep in at the time it was happening. Do you agree with his characterization?

UPTON: I did not see the article that he wrote. I do know that all of the Michigan delegation worked very hard as related to the revival of the auto industry. There was really a choice between bankruptcy and liquidation. There was no one that was willing to come up not only with the cash to keep them afloat but also to serve the warranties of everyone, you and I that drive all these cars. There was no one that could have picked up those pieces other than the federal government.

Later in the interview, Upton disputed Romney’s assertion that the rescue was a President Obama-led bailout of unions, noting that President George W. Bush began the program and that it was “bipartisan from the get-go.” Upton then noted that without the rescue, Michigan “would have hit 40 percent unemployment rates.”

Upton isn’t the only Michigan politician to criticize Romney’s position. Gov. Rick Snyder (R), who also endorsed Romney, told the New York Times last November that the GOP should stop criticizing the auto rescue, saying he wouldn’t “second-guess” it because “the auto industry is doing very well today.” Oddly, both Upton and Snyder have chosen to tout Romney’s economic credentials to Michigan voters while ignoring his factually-challenged opposition to a rescue that saved the state’s largest industry.

Upton gets progressive challenger

By Eartha Jane Melzer/The Michigan Messenger 

Iraq War veteran and progressive activist John Waltz, a Democrat, has moved back home to Michigan to run against Republican Fred Upton (R-St. Joseph) for the Congressional seat in District 6.

Waltz recently stepped down from his role as director for Kentucky-based Heartland Revolution, an organization that has rallied against Michigan’s Emergency Manager law in Benton Harbor. Waltz was among the first to promote the recall of State Rep. Al Pscholka (R-Stevensville), the House sponsor of the Emergency Manager bill.

“After all I have seen in Michigan this year I knew I had to come back and get our beloved state back on track,” Waltz said.

Eclectablog has this bio of Waltz:

John was born and raised in a working family in his hometown of Kalamazoo, Michigan. His dad worked for General Motors for over 30 years and his mom was a homemaker. The youngest of seven children, John grew up believing that through hard work, a person could provide for his or her family, even when times were tough.

John enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the age of 24 and was assigned to an aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington. His first day at sea was September 10, 2001, one day before the terrorist attacks. John’s group was immediately sent to New York to safeguard the city and the harbor.

After the attacks, John served in Afghanistan and later in Iraq. He went back to Iraq as a civilian vocational instructor teaching Iraqis to be electricians, and also worked to raise funds to build hospitals in Iraq. John realized success in the Middle East is about more than just military strength; it requires improving the daily lives of Afghans and Iraqis, and giving them the economic freedom to no longer be dependent on warlords.

During his military service, John was ordered to take an anthrax vaccine that had not been approved by the FDA. When he came home from the Middle East, John suffered severe health problems. His involvement in politics began after fighting for benefits from the Veteran’s Administration. Going on to advocate for veterans on Capitol Hill, John realized just how out of touch politicians had become, and decided to run for Congress.

John is married to Janie Waltz and has four young daughters. John worked as the Executive Director of Heartland Revolution and served as the Executive Director for Severus Worldwide, which focuses on rebuilding hospitals in conflict zones, particularly in Iraq. He also served as the Executive Vice President for the Iraq War Veterans Organization, and as the Kentucky Director for the Order of the Silver Rose, which advocates for Vietnam Veterans injured by exposure to Agent Orange.

This will be the second Congressional campaign for Waltz — last year he made an unsuccessful ran at unseating Republican Geoff Davis in Kentucky’s 4th District.

Report: Paul Ryan May Personally Benefit From Preserving Billions In Taxpayer Oil Subsidies

By Lee Fang 

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the architect of the GOP budget plan, has put forth a plan that calls for ending a number of tax subsidies. However, he has hedged multiple times when asked about oil subsidies. When given the opportunity to end billions in taxpayer giveaways to big oil companies, Ryan voted to preserve the generous subsidies.

The Daily Beast’s Daniel Stone is reporting that Ryan’s protection of billions in wasteful oil subsidies may relate to his own personal fortune. Newly released personal finance disclosures reveal that Ryan and his wife “own stakes in four family companies that lease land in Texas and Oklahoma to the very energy companies that benefit from the tax subsidies in Ryan’s budget plan.” Stone reports that those companies are among his most valuable assets:

Ryan’s father-in-law, Daniel Little, who runs the companies, told Newsweek and The Daily Beast that the family companies are currently leasing the land for mining and drilling to energy giants such as Chesapeake Energy, Devon, and XTO Energy, a recently acquired subsidiary of ExxonMobil.

Some of these firms would be eligible for portions of the $45 billion in energy tax breaks and subsidies over 10 years protected in the Wisconsin lawmaker’s proposed budget. “Those [energy developing companies] benefit a lot from these subsidies,” explained Russ Harding, an energy policy analyst with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, when presented with the situation, without reference to Ryan. “Without those, they’re going to be less profitable.”

According to disclosure reports reviewed by ThinkProgress, other major proponents of extending billions in oil subsidies are also heavily invested in oil and drilling companies. For example, Energy and Commerce Chairman Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) owns up to $250,000 in ExxonMobil stock, among other fossil fuel investments.

Rep. Gerry Connolly Proposes Officially Changing Title Of Anti-EPA Bill To ‘Koch Brothers Appreciation Act’

Paul Breer

Weeks ago, Koch-funded climate change denying Republicans on the House Energy Committeevoted unanimously in favor of the Upton-Inhofe billto eliminate the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The Republican-controlled House is expected to pass the bill later this week and Rep. Gerry Connollly (D-VA) wants to call a spade a spade and officially change the name of the bill to a more appropriate title:

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) wants to change the title of a bill that would permanently block Environmental Protection Agency climate regulations to the “Koch Brothers Appreciation Act,” a reference to the billionaire brothers who are active in Republican politics.

Connolly has submitted to the House Rules Committee a series of amendments that would change the title of the bill to everything from the “Middle Eastern Economic Development and Assistance Act” to the “Head in the Sand Act.”

Others include the … “Oil Producing Economy Capitulation Act.”

The Upton-Inhofe bill is not expected to pass the Senate. But If approved, the bill would would overturn a 2007 Supreme Court decision which ruled that the EPA has the right to regulate car tailpipe emissions under the Clean Air Act. This legislation has been a top priority for the Kochs and their network of the conservative think tank and astroturf groups.

For more on the Kochs, see the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s new report on “What You Need to Know About the Financiers of the Radical Right.”

UPDATESen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), in response to the proposed alternative name amendments, told Connolly and House Democrats this afternoon to “Get a life.”

Committee From Koch’s Upton Calls Carbon Health Threat A ‘Myth’

By Brad Johnson

Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) today introduced legislation with Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) to block the Environmental Protection Agency from implementing Clean Air Act protections against global warming pollution, rejecting the counsel of America’s public health advocates. A boon to Koch Industries and the other polluters who supported his campaign, Upton’s legislation would nullify the EPA’s Supreme Court-mandated scientific finding that burning fossil fuels is damaging our climate system. At a climate hearing on this week Upton justified his legislation by claiming the threat greenhouse gases pose to air quality and public health is a “myth”:

So let’s dispel a myth: air quality and public health will not be harmed or affected in any way by efforts to slow and then stop EPA’s expansive global warming agenda under the Clean Air Act. . . . . So we can stop the EPA from imposing cap and tax and the Clean Air Act will continue to make our families and communities healthier places. So let’s listen to the facts:this issue is not about air quality and public health, it’s about jobs.

Watch it:

By rejecting the clean energy economy, the only job Upton seems interested in saving is his own. Moreover, Upton’s denial of reality comes just days after the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association warned policymakers of the grave threat global warming poses to the health our families and communities. Based on scientific studies, experts agree that the following are key health risks from carbon pollution:

– More than doubled asthma rates and lengthened asthma season – Threatened access to clean drinking water – Increases in airborne and insect borne illnesses – Increases in morbidity and mortality due to heat waves and other extreme weather – Increases in diarrheal, respiratory, and heart disease – Increased risk of salmonella spread as average temperatures rise

The health risks of climate pollution are particularly severe among low-income communities, children, and the elderly. With this attempt to rewrite the Clean Air Act, Upton is protecting polluter profits at the expense of his own constituents. And that’s no myth.

Incoming Energy Chair Rep. Fred Upton: ‘I Don’t Think We Have To Regulate Carbon’

By George Zornick

ThinkProgress recently noted that Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), who will take control of the House Energy and Commerce Committee this week, has dramatically changed his views on regulating carbon emissions over the past several months, evolving from a position that “[c]limate change is a serious problem that necessitates serious solutions” in April 2009 to writing in the Wall Street Journal this week that he opposes any regulation of carbon emissions, and that if the EPA did so, it would be an “unconstitutional power grab that will kill millions of jobs.”

Noting Upton’s affiliation with a group “financed in part by oil companies,” Fox News host Chris Wallace challenged Upton to explain why he has flipped on his views regarding carbon emissions:

WALLACE: In the article that you co-wrote with the head of Americans for Prosperity, which is a group that is financed in part by oil companies, you say this — “This presumes that carbon is a problem in need of regulation. We are not convinced.” But we checked, Congressman, on your congressional web site, and you say on the web site, “I strongly believe that everything must be on the table as we seek to reduce carbon emissions. Climate change is a serious problem that necessitates serious solutions.” So question, is carbon a problem or isn’t it? And if it is, if you’re going to kill the EPA regulation, what is your solution?

UPTON: We want to do this in a reasonable way. Before the end of the next decade, our country is going to need 30 to 40 more percent more electricity that we use today. So we need an all-of-the-above strategy. We need clean coal. We need natural gas. We need nuclear — something that has not happened. We need a whole host of things.

WALLACE: Do we need to regulate carbon?

UPTON: I don’t think that we have to regulate carbon to the degree we have a carbon tax or you have a cap-and-trade system. And the House spoke pretty loudly — you know, you take that same cap-and- trade bill that passed the House last year. Today it would lose by 50 votes and it could never come up in the Senate. This is not — this regulation process is not the way to proceed.

Watch it:

Upton clearly sidesteps Wallace’s straightforward question: are carbon emissions a problem, as he’s previously said? Upton has received substantial campaign donations from Koch Industries, and serious Tea Party opposition for his energy chairmanship because of his previous truth-telling on carbon, so his reasons for avoiding that answer are clear.

What’s also clear is that Upton, as head of the powerful committee, is not going to treat carbon emissions as a problem at all. He rules out a cap-and-trade system and a “carbon tax,” and in the Wall Street Journal op-ed, opposes any EPA regulation of carbon, saying “we think the American consumer would prefer not to be skinned by Obama’s EPA.” Short of those measures, there’s no way carbon emissions will be controlled in the near future. Upton is not proposing any “serious solutions” to what he previously termed a “serious problem” — a flip-flop even Fox News has noted.

Update This afternoon, Upton scrubbed his website of the quote Wallace highlighted: "I strongly believe that everything must be on the table as we seek to reduce carbon emissions. Climate change is a serious problem that necessitates serious solutions." The new version is here, and the cached version is here.

Republican politicians display stunning hypocrisy on health care insurance reform

By Communications guru/The Conservative media

Americans United for Change is calling out U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, on his hypocrisy of saying repealing the historic health care insurance reform law is his “top priority,” yet he has no problem accepting his own government-subsidized health plan. In response to Upton’s declaration earlier this week that his “top priority will be full repeal” of the Affordable Care Act, progressive issue-advocacy group Americans United for Change challenged the incoming Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to practice what he preaches and start by dropping his own government subsidized health plan. It only seems fair considering that repealing health reform would effectively deny thousands of Michigan families access to the same kind of quality, affordable health care choices Upton enjoys as a Member of Congress.

“You first, Congressman,” said Tom McMahon, Executive Director, Americans United for Change. “If Fred Upton insists on going down this path towards denying thousands of Michigan families access to quality, affordable health care, shouldn’t he start with his own family and forgo his government subsidized health plan?”

The Republican hypocrisy on this issue has been stunning, like that of U.S. Rep.-elect Andy Harris, R-MD. Harris, another fervent proponent of repealing the Affordable Care Act, recently made national headlines when he brazenly complained to his colleagues that his congressional health benefits weren’t kicking in soon enough for his liking. It would be funny if it weren’t so hypocritical. It has led Americans United for Change to launch a radio and Facebook ad campaign in Maryland calling on Harris to “Drop It or Stop It.” But Upton is just one of many GOP hypocrites.

“If Congressman Upton had his way and the new health law were repealed, the insurance companies would go right back to dropping people’s coverage when they get sick, young adults under 26 would be kicked off their parents’ plans, insurance companies could go back to imposing lifetime limits on care and denying care to those with “pre-existing conditions”, and seniors would again have to fear falling into the “doughnut hole” prescription coverage gap,” McMahon said. “Why does Congressman Upton want to put the big insurance companies back in charge?”

But we also have another stunning example of hypocrisy right here in Michigan with extremist Republican Congressman-elect Tim Walberg, R-Tipton. Blogging for Michigan revealed that the Lenawee County extremist will opt out of federal health-care coverage. But Walberg, conveniently, forgets to tell you that he already receives lifetime government-subsidized health care insurance because of the 16 years in spent in the Michigan House.

Beck And FreedomWorks Campaign Against Fred Upton: ‘Light Bulbs Are Just The Beginning’

By Brad Johnson A war is brewing among the right wing over the chairmanship of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has jurisdiction over health care, climate policy, and energy policy. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) is the leading contender, but Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) is seeking a waiver from Republican leadership to retake the gavel, while Reps. John Shimkus (R-IN) and Cliff Stearns (R-FL) are also in the hunt. Although the candidates are lockstep in opposition to the Obama agenda and in their intention to launch witch hunts against climate science, Upton is a relative moderate, having admitted in the past that greenhouse emissions should be reduced. In contrast, Barton — who famously apologized to BP this summer — is fully aligned with the

oil and gas industry, with $1,482,630 in lifetime contributions.

Now this internal fight has exploded into a Tea Party battle royale. FreedomWorks, run by veteran GOP lobbyist Dick Armey, has launched Down With Upton, a website attacking “Big Government Republican Fred Upton” for a record “full of votes for more regulation, more spending, and more taxes.” In an email announcing the campaign, FreedomWorks cited Glenn Beck’s warning that “light bulbs are just the beginning”:

Fred Upton, currently considered the front-runner for chairmanship of the critical House Energy and Commerce committee, is far out of step with the Tea Party movement, the GOP and the American people as a whole. You may have heard Glenn Beck talking about Fred Upton introducing a bill to ban incandescent light bulbs in favor of so-called “environmentally-friendly” alternatives. The truth is, Fred Upton has a Big Government record a mile long, and light bulbs are just the beginning.

Upton has already reneged his position on light-bulb efficiency, telling Politico “he’s not afraid to go back after an issue he once supported but that has come under withering assault on the conservative airwaves, including on Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck’s talk shows.”

There was, in fact, no bill to ban incandescent light bulbs. Because of the advanced light-bulb standards Upton helped pass in 2007, “the incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation,” the New York Times reported last year. “There have been more incandescent innovations in the last three years than in the last two decades.”

The Tea Party movement is increasingly attacking American innovation and 21st-century jobs on all fronts: Rush Limbaugh is leading the charge against the breakthrough Chevy Volt, Republican governors are killing high-speed rail, Glenn Beck is cooking up conspiracy theories about smart grid technology, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) is trying to kill the wind industry, and the entire right-wing movement is convinced green jobs are going to destroy the United States economy.