{"id":2767,"date":"2012-10-05T09:24:37","date_gmt":"2012-10-05T13:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/?p=2767"},"modified":"2012-10-05T09:51:06","modified_gmt":"2012-10-05T13:51:06","slug":"the-biggest-lie-of-the-debate-romneys-false-claim-about-clean-energy-bankruptcies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/2012\/10\/the-biggest-lie-of-the-debate-romneys-false-claim-about-clean-energy-bankruptcies\/","title":{"rendered":"The Biggest Lie Of The Debate? Romney&#8217;s False Claim About Clean Energy Bankruptcies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Solar_Array.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2775\" title=\"Solar_Array\" src=\"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Solar_Array.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"244\" height=\"183\" srcset=\"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Solar_Array.jpg 244w, http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Solar_Array-150x112.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 244px) 100vw, 244px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cAnd these [clean energy] businesses, many of them have gone out of business, I think about half of them, of the ones have been invested in, have gone out of business.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The New York Times, one of the few mainstream organizations to follow up on this claim, called Romney\u2019s comment a \u201cgross overstatement.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Actually, it\u2019s much more offensive than that.<\/p>\n<p>At a time when the U.S. clean energy industry is supporting thousands of innovative businesses in every state (many of them small businesses), hundreds of thousands of jobs (including tens of thousands in Romney\u2019s home state of Massachusetts), and leveraging tens of billions in private capital, Romney casually tried to claim that \u201chalf\u201d of businesses that received federal incentives have gone out of business. That\u2019s not even remotely close to the truth.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, let\u2019s throw the Romney camp a bone. To the small number of people who actually monitor this topic, it was clear that he probably meant the loan guarantee program \u2014 a tool that provides government backing of private loans in order to leverage capital for \u201cfirst of a kind\u201d renewable energy projects<\/p>\n<p>After numerous tweets last night calling Romney out, Time Magazine\u2019s Michael Grunwald confirmed today via twitter that the campaign was backtracking: \u201cNow Romney camp tells me he misspoke, only meant to single out loan program.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/climate\/2012\/10\/04\/960231\/the-biggest-and-least-discussed-lie-of-the-debate-romneys-false-claim-about-clean-energy-bankruptcies\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>MORE<\/strong>: \u00a0The Biggest (And Least Discussed) Lie Of The Debate? Romney&#8217;s False Claim About Clean Energy Bankruptcies | ThinkProgress<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; \u201cAnd these [clean energy] businesses, many of them have gone out of business, I think about half of them, of the ones have been invested in, have gone out of business.\u201d The New York Times, one of the few mainstream organizations to follow up on this claim, called Romney\u2019s comment a \u201cgross overstatement.\u201d Actually,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,22],"tags":[218,912,832,301],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2767"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2767"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2776,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2767\/revisions\/2776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}