Here are facts for the fact-checkers. During his speech at the Republican Party National Convention, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan never said a plant was closed under President Barack Obama. What Ryan said was the plant was about to close when then-candidate Obama gave the speech saying that if the government uses its resources correctly, that plant would stay open for another 100 years. And then Ryan said that the plant did not last another year (fact because as the Associated Press correctly noted the only thing they correctly noted was that it closed in December of 2008) and is still closed to this day.
If Obama would have really cared about that plant in Wisconsin when he signed the stimulus bailout of the GM, Chrysler and others, he would have made sure as president that government resources were used to reopen that plant, but he didn’t.
So despite AP’s best effort to sell democratic talking points as fact-checking, be sure to check the facts when you take what Ryan said in context. Nothing Ryan said was factually false, at least not on what he said about the GM plant in Janesville, Wis.
Daniel Keane
Vancouver
