Even FactCheck.org attacks Obama's false ads about Romney shipping jobs overseas

First, even if it were true that Romney saved companies by contracting out for some work to be done overseas, it wouldn't bother me. Suppose that you have two companies: one that is a completely foreign company and another American company that uses call centers and manufacturing facilities in other countries to produce its products. In the type of world that the Obama campaign lives in, their policies would drive the American company out of business. Would the Obama people rather have Americans designing the product and managing sales or a foreign company producing the product? Of course, one could have high tariffs that make it possible to produce the products profitably in the US, but consumers will get stuck with higher prices. Do the Obama people prefer that? On the one hand you have the Obama administration pushing free trade deals and on the other hand they are making these on companies contracting out services. In any case, all this is beside the point because despite multiple campaign ads, the Obama ads are completely false. A simple update on July 2nd summarizes the debate.

Late on July 1, the Obama campaign issued a formal objection to this article, claiming that Romney remained at least a “part time” manager of Bain after February 1999. We strongly disagree. Both Romney and Bain have stated repeatedly that Romney “has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way” since leaving to head the Olympics. Romney stated that twice on official federal disclosure documents, where a falsehood could draw a federal felony charge and possible fines and prison time if convicted. A contemporary news account describes Romney as working 16-hour days on the Olympics.

The FactCheck also deals with claims about Romney outsourcing as governor and Romney as a “corporate raider." They also have a new discussion entitled: "FactCheck to Obama Camp: Your Complaint is All Wet." The Obama campaign relies heavily on a Washington Post story for its claims, but even the WP Fact Checker was pretty tough on the Obama campaign:

Regarding the outsourcing claims, we have frowned on these before. The Obama campaign rests its case on three examples of Bain-controlled companies sending jobs overseas. But only one of the examples — involving Holson Burns Group — took place when Romney was actively managing Bain Capital. Regarding the other claims, concerning Canadian electronics maker SMTC Manufacturing and customer service firm Modus Media, the Obama campaign tries to take advantage of a gray area in which Romney had stepped down from Bain — to manage the Salt Lake City Olympics — but had not sold his shares in the firm. We had previously given the Obama campaign Three Pinocchios for such tactics. The Modus Media case is also not an example of shipping jobs overseas. The company closed one plant in California and transferred the jobs to North Carolina, Washington and Utah. At the same time, it opened an unrelated plant in Mexico. The Obama campaign once trumpeted the fact that we had dinged a conservative Super PAC for making the same leap in logic. The claim that Romney outsourced jobs as governor is equally overblown. . . .