In a speech in Miami, Vice President Joe Biden puffed up two statistics related to bringing manufacturing jobs back. Biden claimed 54 percent of U.S. companies with facilities in China said they "plan on coming home" next year, citing an industry survey.
Actually, the survey found that 54 percent expressed "an interest" in bringing business back to the U.S., but only 24 percent already have begun returning or plan to do so in the next two years. Biden also used outdated, and inflated, figures when making a point about cheaper natural gas in the U.S. acting as an incentive for reshoring, saying that natural gas in the U.S. is "three to five times cheaper" than in Europe and "five to seven times cheaper" than it is in Asia. Those figures were accurate in 2012, but a dramatic drop in the price of natural gas overseas has significantly cut those ratios to slightly more than double for Europe and triple for Asia.
Bush, Warren and Trump's common tie
Jeb Bush mocked Donald Trump by saying liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren supports Trump's "tax plan." Warren simply praised Trump's call to raise taxes on hedge fund managers. Bush's own tax plan calls for that very same thing. Warren's praise was limited to Trump's stated support for taxing profits made by hedge fund managers as ordinary income. And ironically, that's one issue on which Warren, Trump and Bush seem to agree. As the lead of a Sept. 10 story in the New York Times put it: "What do Jeb Bush, Elizabeth Warren and Donald J. Trump have in common? They would like to raise taxes on 'the hedge fund guys'."
Palin gets stuck on a happy glacier
Sarah Palin says man isn't to blame for climate change, citing the fact that some glaciers in Alaska are expanding. But an individual glacier's growth does not disprove the existence or causes of global warming. In fact, the vast majority of glaciers in Alaska and around the world are losing ice rapidly. Alaska's glaciers are losing 75 gigatons of ice every year. A gigaton is equal to a billion tons of ice. Regional variations in precipitation patterns may cause some glaciers to grow, but most glaciers around the world are losing ice as the climate warms. Palin may not blame climate change on humans, but science does: 97% of climate scientists agree the use of fossil fuels are responsible for global warming and resultant climate change. Palin's claim that some glaciers are growing in Alaska is true, but this isn't a reason to question human-caused climate change. Regional variations in precipitation patterns may cause some glaciers to grow, but most glaciers around the world are losing ice as the climate warms. Palin is "cherry picking" a few glaciers to make a point.
Democrats get aboard tax train again
The claim that Republicans have "supported tax breaks for companies that shipped jobs overseas, instead of protecting jobs" has been a staple of Democratic attack ads for more than a decade. But there's little substance to it. The tax code is only a minor factor in the decisions of U.S. companies to locate employment in other countries. Those decisions are made mainly to take advantage of lower wages, and to locate production close to foreign customers. Furthermore - contrary to widely held perceptions - even some Democratic economists say such "offshoring" accounts for just a small fraction of the many millions of jobs that are lost each year. Christian Weller of the Center for American Progress conceded in 2004 that "offshoring accounts for a relatively small portion of U.S. unemployment."
Chip Tuthill is a longtime resident of Mancos. Website usedL www.factcheck.org.
