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Obama's Ironic Lie About an American Icon
Townhall.com ^ | August 15, 2012 | Terry Jeffrey

Posted on 08/15/2012 4:53:46 AM PDT by Kaslin

To justify expanding the power of the federal government and increasing the burden of debt on federal taxpayers, President Barack Obama has repeatedly lied about a peerless icon of America's pioneering spirit -- the Golden Gate Bridge.

"During the Great Depression, America built the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge," Obama said in his January State of the Union Address. "After World War II, we connected our states with a system of highways. Democratic and Republican administrations invested in great projects that benefited everybody, from the workers who built them to the businesses that still use them today."

Obama suggested here that the federal government invested in the Golden Gate Bridge. Elsewhere, he has used a royal "we" to seemingly credit the federal government.

"We built this country together. We built railroads and highways. We built the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge. We built those things together," Obama said on May 10 in Seattle.

"We were creating the conditions for everybody to be able to succeed," Obama said. "These things made us all richer. They gave us all opportunity. They moved us all together, all forward, as one nation, and as one people.

"And that's the true lesson of our past," Obama concluded.

But it is not true.

The federal government did not conceive of the Golden Gate Bridge. Or design it. Or finance it. Or build it. Nor did the state government of California.

The people of Marin, San Francisco, Sonoma and Del Norte counties, as well as parts of Napa and Mendocino counties, built the bridge. The Bank of America financed it by buying bonds approved by voters in those counties. And drivers who actually crossed the bridge and paid its toll provided the money to pay off those bonds -- a feat accomplished only 34 years after the bridge was completed.

The movement to build the bridge, Louise Nelson Dyble reported in "Paying the Toll: Local Power, Regional Politics and the Golden Gate Bridge," essentially started at a 1923 meeting convened by Frank P. Doyle, chairman of the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce. The movement crystallized when state assemblyman Frank L. Coombs, a native Californian born in 1853, pushed through legislation permitting the creation of a "special district" that Northern California counties could join if they wished for the purpose of building a bridge from San Francisco to Marin.

The special district was a corporation separate and apart from state and local governments. It was dependent on local voters for authorization, who in turn were responsible for guaranteeing its funding.

This differed sharply from the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge, which would be funded by both the state and federal governments.

"In contrast," writes Dyble, "Golden Gate Bridge boosters were vehement about maintaining local control of the project. However, local control also meant local risk; even Coombs, the sponsor of the enabling act for the Golden Gate Bridge, remarked that its financing put a 'heavy burden on the small counties.' Also, the Golden Gate Bridge had little chance of winning state or federal assistance because the bridge district was structured to limit its accountability to other governments."

Dyble quotes a remarkable claim published in a report from the chief engineer for the project. "After the 40th year, the bridge having retired its bonds and accumulated the substantial surplus of 17 million-odd besides, will become free," said the report. "The user's tax of a toll bridge falls only on THOSE WHO USE THE BRIDGE. Thus the visitor relieves the local taxpayer and pays his pro rata cost of the improvement."

In 1930, Dyble reported, the people in the six counties that were part of the special district voted by the necessary two-thirds majority to approve a bond issue.

But that was just one year after the 1929 stock market crash. Who would buy the bonds?

As Kevin Starr wrote in "Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Bridge," the special district looked into borrowing money from the federal Reconstruction Finance Corp., which had already provided $71.4 million in financing for the Bay Bridge. But that was to no avail.

"Enter Amadeo Peter Giannini, chairman and president of the Bank of America and the controlling presence on the Bankamerica syndicate that was considering the purchase of $6 million in Golden Gate Bridge District bonds necessary to begin construction," wrote Starr.

According to Starr, Giannini asked Strauss how long the bridge would last. "Forever," said Strauss.

But the debt incurred in building the bridge was not eternal. The bridge district paid it off in 1971.

Alas, as Dyble noted in her history, the bridge district then morphed into a mass transit agency that uses tolls imposed on motorists to subsidize buses and ferries.

Obama's repeated use of the Golden Gate Bridge as a symbol to justify his use of federal deficit spending to sustain a manifestly flawed vision for spurring economic growth is ironic because the building of that bridge is as much a symbol of local action and fiscal prudence as the bridge itself is an icon of architectural excellence and engineering prowess.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: goldengatebridge; sanfrancisco

1 posted on 08/15/2012 4:53:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

This is something the Romney campaign should use. Hold an “event” at or near the bridge to talk about Obama’s lies on this issue.


2 posted on 08/15/2012 4:56:23 AM PDT by samtheman (Obama. Mugabe. Chavez. (Obamugavez))
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To: Kaslin

Obozo can’t be bothered with facts. He has a mission and he’ll say/do what it takes. The thing that really irritates me is this crap about Romney’s tax records. First, since when is success a bad thing? Second, if I were Romney, I’d tell him: “I’ll release my tax records when you release all of the records you’ve sequestered, from your college records to your resignation from the IL bar.” What a jerk.


3 posted on 08/15/2012 4:59:30 AM PDT by econjack (Some people are as dumb as soup.)
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To: Kaslin

Note:
The Bank of America mentioned in the article is not today’s B of A.


4 posted on 08/15/2012 5:07:44 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (I didn't post this. Someone else did.)
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To: Kaslin

For an American President Obama sure does not know much about America or its history..........


5 posted on 08/15/2012 5:10:53 AM PDT by SECURE AMERICA (Where can I sign up for the New American Revolution and the Crusades 2012?)
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To: Kaslin

And what great public works project was build from the $800 billion stimulus bill of 2009?


6 posted on 08/15/2012 5:12:31 AM PDT by vekzen
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To: SECURE AMERICA
If they tried building that bridge today it would be like Boston's big dig. Cost overruns, strikes and a black hole of fiscal insanity. It would also take longer due to the union rules that were not in existence in the days of construction of the Golden Gate Bridge.
7 posted on 08/15/2012 5:18:59 AM PDT by Warrior Nurse (I am an American Fighting Man, fighting to keep our country free from despots and idiots)
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To: SECURE AMERICA

And he’s supposed to be the smartest President ever


8 posted on 08/15/2012 5:22:33 AM PDT by Kaslin (Acronym for OBAMA: One Big Ass Mistake America)
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To: Eric in the Ozarks

I would agree


9 posted on 08/15/2012 5:26:57 AM PDT by Kaslin (Acronym for OBAMA: One Big Ass Mistake America)
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To: Kaslin
This is not a lie. BO does plenty of those. This is ignorance. This is FAIL. It is saying whatever knowing his minions hang on his word alone. This again proves that BO is out to destroy what makes this nation great. His focus is strife. His method is sabotage.
10 posted on 08/15/2012 5:32:29 AM PDT by The Truth Will Make You Free
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To: SECURE AMERICA

He’s not one of us.


11 posted on 08/15/2012 5:49:53 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (I didn't post this. Someone else did.)
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To: The Truth Will Make You Free

re: It is saying whatever knowing his minions hang on his word alone.

That and trusting that the MSM will never factcheck your lies.


12 posted on 08/15/2012 5:56:40 AM PDT by Nevadan
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To: SECURE AMERICA

“...r an American President Obama sure does not know much about America or its history..........”

Who says he’s an AMERICAN?


13 posted on 08/15/2012 6:19:52 AM PDT by NCC-1701 (The LEFT's intolerance of the RIGHT is intolerable.)
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To: The Truth Will Make You Free

Most of the people in the audience wouldn’t know, nor care, if what he says is true. They want him to get on that “shared” part of his speech. They get excited about You Giving more of your paycheck to them.


14 posted on 08/15/2012 6:30:13 AM PDT by radioone ( Main Stream Media. The Government built that.)
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To: Kaslin

Thanks for posting.


15 posted on 08/15/2012 7:09:15 AM PDT by Richard from IL
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To: Kaslin

Didn’t we build this city on rock and roll?


16 posted on 08/15/2012 4:19:46 PM PDT by Terry Mross (To my kin and former friends: Do not contact me if you still love obama.)
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To: radioone

#14 — absolutely.

All this historical truth stuff is just sooooo much to READ! “We did it” and “we share” is much easier to understand, esp. the translation — “gimme mo’ yo’ money.”


17 posted on 08/15/2012 4:24:10 PM PDT by workerbee (June 28, 2012 -- 9/11 From Within)
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