SCV Talk · Archive
Nine years of the Valley’s town square · 2006–2015
SCV Talk
July 12, 2012· scvtalk.com · WordPress (SCVTalk 3.0) · Wayback capture

GOP uses Santa Clarita transit purchase to hammer Obama

By Jeff — Jeff Wilson

Remember the story from a few months ago about how a Sun Valley business owner was really upset that the City of Santa Clarita awarded a transit-related & stimulus-funded contract to a New Zealand company rather than his? Here, let me refresh you:

The CEO of a Sun Valley-based technology company is crying foul after the Santa Clarita City Council awarded a contract using federal stimulus funds to a New Zealand-based firm rather than his business.

But city officials say all federal requirements for awarding of stimulus money have been met — and the city saved more than $200,000 in taxpayer funds.

The contract is for installing 86 on-board visual display monitors for the entire Santa Clarita Transit fleet.

The city issued a request for proposal for the monitors and only received two responses — an $840,192.25 proposal from Tezo Systems Unlimited of Sun Valley and a $545,178 proposal from Connexionz, which is based in New Zealand.

Well, guess what- this story just went national because it’s being used by the GOP and -by extension- Gov. Mitt Romney as part of a new line of attack on President Obama, accusing Obama of being the “Outsourcer in Chief.” You can see how the GOP is using the Connexionz bus purchase story on its new website, ObamanomicsOutsourced.com:

At the time, the City defended its decision by saying that Connexionz offered a better bang for the buck/taxpayer value than the Sun Valley company. A few days after the story broke, Gloria Ortiz took over messaging and claimed in the Signal article above that the City’s award to the New Zealand company “more than met” the requirements of the stimulus act and that American workers and products would benefit from awarding the job to the New Zealand firm. In fact, City officials thought that “local workers will be hired from a subcontractor in nearby Lake Hughes” to manufacture the bus monitors.

This is election season and facts are bound to be distorted, cherry-picked or otherwise manipulated, but still; there have got to be some red-faces at City Hall today. Hopefully Santa Clarita won’t get mentioned too much as this story percolates around the right-wing blogosphere and eventually onto Hannity/O’Reilly/Fox News.

The Washington Post provides some context & commentary on the merits of the new attack strategy, if you’re interested.

Comments (33)

  1. Bill ReynoldsJuly 12, 2012 at 6:59 AM PT
    Go Mitt!
  2. IHeartSCVJuly 12, 2012 at 7:53 AM PT
    The Washington Post article is a terrifying reminder of how much journalism has been dumbed down. While there are numbers in the piece, the analysis relies of a complex calculus of “mosts”, “many”s, and “some”s to provide a truth quotient in subjective units of, sigh, Pinocchios. Dear God. “Just because money went to foreign companies does not mean that all — or even much — of that money went to foreign workers.” “The amount involved is so puny as to be laughable…” “The city [of Santa Clarita] said the money would still go to ‘local employees and is spent at local businesses.’” “Wind turbines could be made overseas, but a good portion of the parts could be made in the United States — or vice versa.”
  3. JeffJuly 12, 2012 at 8:03 AM PT
    That seems a little unfair. You weren’t expecting a rigorous quantitative analysis of the claims in the attack ad were you? Like here: “Wind turbines could be made overseas, but a good portion of the parts could be made in the United States — or vice versa.” Did you want a percentage calculation of how many parts were made in the US? A list of each part? I think sites like the Washington Post’s Fact Checker, FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com are in response to the dumbing down of journalism, not evidence of it . These sites are used to combat the lies public figures tell us. Politicians have become increasingly capable of manipulating the media; these sites take the time to analyze the claims (you’ll notice they call Obama’s team out for its claims in the GOP Piece too) when no one else does. Last thing I’ll say is that journalism is and should be written for the masses. There’s a reason it’s known as the “first draft of history.” An informed democracy is a better democracy.
  4. IHeartSCVJuly 12, 2012 at 11:36 AM PT
    There’s a difference between writing for the general public and writing dreck. The sentence you picked out, “Wind turbines could be made overseas, but a good portion of the parts could be made in the United States — or vice versa,” literally says nothing. It could be paraphrased: “Wind turbine parts will be built somewhere in the world, maybe.” What use is a statement like that? And no matter what, claiming to describe the truthfulness of a statement by letting some guy pick an arbitrary number of Pinocchios is absurd.
  5. MikeJuly 13, 2012 at 12:56 AM PT
    The sentence you cite isn’t a concluding sentence, nor does it sum up a particular situation. It’s a general statement describing how wind turbines are built. He then goes into specifics as to why the wind turbine-related claims on the site are unsubstantiated. This isn’t a news article, but a piece of news analysis. The sentence is less formal, but it’s also true. Some things are built in a very vertical fashion, with just about everything coming out of the same factory. Wind turbines are not one of them. It looks silly, sure, but the number of Pinocchios isn’t arbitrary. Three means “Significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions.” Two means “Significant omissions and/or exaggerations. Some factual error may be involved but not necessarily. A politician can create a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people,” while four means “Whoppers.” A whopper being a “gross untruth”. In this case, three Pinnochios fits just perfectly. There are plenty of examples used in this site that go well beyond the two-Pinnochio standard, but I don’t see many out-and-out whoppers.
  6. Capt. GeneJuly 12, 2012 at 7:56 AM PT
    “…the City defended its decision by saying that Connexionz offered a better bang for the buck/taxpayer value…” Isn’t this the same line of thinking that gets the taxpayer those oh so highly skilled union workers?
  7. blutoJuly 13, 2012 at 6:41 AM PT
    Or they use to justify obscene salarys for department heads and appointees…
  8. Bill ReynoldsJuly 12, 2012 at 7:56 AM PT
    “Over his four years in office, Obama promised that he would focus on creating “jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced.” However, as he racked up trillions in new debt, billions of dollars did go to create jobs that were outsourced or spent overseas. Whether it is electric cars made in Finland or solar panels in Mexico, taxpayers would be astonished to learn that their hard earned money went abroad for jobs that weren’t created in the United States.”
  9. Phil EllisJuly 12, 2012 at 8:47 AM PT
    Don’t forget all the “foreign” cars that are manufactured right here in the ole US of A. – and all those domestic cars that are manufactured outside of the good ole US of A.
  10. Bill ReynoldsJuly 12, 2012 at 9:49 AM PT
    “Last thing I’ll say is that journalism is and should be written for the masses.” How about journalism should be based on facts….
  11. Bill ReynoldsJuly 12, 2012 at 10:03 AM PT
    http://www.drudgereport.com/flashcm.htm
  12. PetzJuly 12, 2012 at 10:33 AM PT
    US Olympic team uniforms made in China. Luxury electric cars built in Finland http://randazza.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/fisker-cars-to-be-built-in-finland-after-taking-a-529-million-u-s-government-backed-loan/ Jeff only found the spare change left under the seat.
  13. JeffJuly 12, 2012 at 11:13 AM PT
    Bite me. The blog is about SCV, the post is about SCV.
  14. PetzJuly 12, 2012 at 11:11 PM PT
    Don’t you have AC in Newhall?
  15. Phil EllisJuly 13, 2012 at 3:49 AM PT
    Not many homes run on DC nowadays.
  16. Bill ReynoldsJuly 12, 2012 at 10:39 AM PT
    A-Hah! Caught cherry pickin, eh.
  17. PetzJuly 12, 2012 at 10:52 AM PT
    Petz is beside himself with the Condi trial balloon floating around. The last thing we need is a pointy headed mastermind who won’t say whether she voted for Obama in 08 Romney needs to pick a street fighting Conservative. The Tea Party Patriots set the table in 2010 and we aren’t even getting a scrap off the table. This is unacceptable !
  18. JeffJuly 12, 2012 at 11:12 AM PT
    Pick from the following: ()Chris Christie ()Christine O’Donnell ()Sharon Angle ()Joe Miller ()Bobby Jindal ()Marco Rubio ()Other
  19. PetzJuly 12, 2012 at 11:46 AM PT
    Jeb Bush and Sarah Palin should be on the list.
  20. CastaicClayJuly 13, 2012 at 1:37 AM PT
    Setting up the Obama slam dunk!
  21. Fed Up N SCVJuly 13, 2012 at 1:33 AM PT
    Mike Pence or Rand Paul
  22. PetzJuly 12, 2012 at 12:57 PM PT
    Personally, Petz would not favor the choice of a VP who had never been married. Marriage is a life experience that helps build character and develop wisdom.
  23. MikeJuly 12, 2012 at 4:40 PM PT
    Quite the dog whistle!
  24. spineflower2July 13, 2012 at 12:08 AM PT
    So those like Gingrich who have many marriage “life experiences” are even better, right? You must love this fluff piece: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/01/20/newt-gingrichs-three-marriages-mean-might-make-strong-president-really/ Satirical comedy gold! Except the goon was serious!
  25. Bill ReynoldsJuly 13, 2012 at 3:50 AM PT
    Drudge Poll has “Condi 4 VP” at 65%.
  26. Bill ReynoldsJuly 12, 2012 at 11:18 AM PT
    Not entirely true, Master Blogger.
  27. Bill ReynoldsJuly 12, 2012 at 4:15 PM PT
    Brilliant, Petz!
  28. PetzJuly 12, 2012 at 7:36 PM PT
    The real scandal is how Obama outsourced human space flight out to the Russians and shuttered Cape Canaveral. But the libs don’t really care they believe telling the truth about Obama and holding him accountable is scandal.
  29. spineflower2July 13, 2012 at 12:12 AM PT
    Oh brother! The shuttle was at the end if its economical and safe life cycle, and the next phase of American space flight was not ready for prime time (neglected durintg Bush’s 8 years), so the only logical choice was to use what was available in the free market. Of course, had Obama funded a crash program to get an American manned launch capability ready he’d have been lambasted for budget busting in rough economic times. You have to call the coin toss BEFORE the toss is made or you just don’t get taken seriously.
  30. Phil EllisJuly 13, 2012 at 12:27 AM PT
    scandalous and racist!
  31. ToddJuly 13, 2012 at 1:27 AM PT
    Once again, Steven shows that despite all his claims of being a Republican/Tea Partier/Etc, he’s nothing more than a liberal who wants to increase the size of government. The policies of the Obama administration have led to the privatization of the space travel industry. One would think that someone so acutely tuned to the heavens as you claim to be, you’d be aware of the success of a little company here in Southern California named Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or more commonly known as SpaceX. Their Falcon rocket and Dragon capsule really revolutionized the industry by being the first private (as in non-government) entity to deliver goods to the ISS. Wouldn’t a conservative such as you claim to be support a shifting of this type of activity from the public sector to the private sector???
  32. MikeJuly 13, 2012 at 1:38 AM PT
    Friendly tip: don’t take Petz any more seriously than he takes himself.
  33. PetzJuly 16, 2012 at 12:57 AM PT
    And Mike should stick to topics he knows something about, like BBQ. Obama lied to the employees at the Cape in 2008 and that is the fact.

Preserved as part of the SCV Talk Archive. Text is presented as originally published; presentation has been standardised for readability. The original capture is available at the Internet Archive.

Support