FactCheck.org : Obama’s ‘Truth Team’ Wrong on GOP Donor
The Obama “Truth Team” blames GOP donor Thomas O’Malley’s refinery company for helping to “drive gas prices up this year by curtailing gas production.” But the facts are the exact opposite. The Energy Information Administration credits PBF Energy for preventing a price spike in the Northeast this year by opening a refinery in Delaware — partially offsetting the loss of production from two other Philadelphia-area refineries that have closed.
Obama’s ‘Enemies List’?
We came across these bogus claims while following the name-calling going on between the Obama campaign and GOP donors — a dispute that reached new heights (or depths?) when the president’s campaign published a “brief history” of some major GOP donors. Some — including Democratic pollster Doug Schoen — compared it to Richard Nixon’s “enemies list.”
In fact, in a separate May report, the EIA credits PBF Energy specifically for helping to avoid a spike in gasoline prices in the Northeast. That’s because in October 2011 PBF opened a refinery in Delaware that helped offset the loss of production from three other refineries that supply the East Coast.
EIA, May 11: Since September 2011, two refineries in the Philadelphia area (ConocoPhillips Trainer refinery and Sunoco’s Marcus Hook refinery) and one major Caribbean export refinery supplying the East Coast (HOVENSA’s U.S. Virgin Islands refinery) have closed. … Those closures have been partially offset by the startup of PBF Energy’s Delaware City refinery in October 2011, which had been shut down in late 2009 by Valero before its sale to PBF Energy.
Let’s be clear: We welcome all efforts to shed light on major donors to groups seeking to influence the 2012 election. We do it ourselves. We call it the “2012 Players Guide,” which profiles an ever-growing list of deep-pocketed organizations from across the political spectrum. These are the groups that are behind many of the ads you see on TV, hear on the radio and receive in your mailbox.
But, in this case, the Obama campaign got it wrong. O’Malley is right: “[S]omebody screwed up.”
- Eugene Kiely