Obamateurism of the Day

When lecturing one’s opponent on acceptable economic policy, it helps to actually know the terminology. Barack Obama attacked Mitt Romney on a number of recent occasions for the “outsourcing” done by companies at Bain Capital — and then scoffed when corrected:

Last week it was reported Governor Romney’s old firm owned companies that, according to this article, were pioneers in the business of outsourcing American jobs to places like China and India.  And yesterday his advisors were asked about this, and they tried to clear it up by explaining that there’s actually a difference between outsourcing and offshoring. (Laughter.)  I’m not making that up.  You can’t make something like that up.  (Laughter.)

You can’t make up ignorance like this, either. There is actually a huge difference between the two.  Many companies choose to outsource payroll, for instance, which is why we have the ADP employment report each month.  ADP employes people to handle that service more effectively, due to economies of scale.  That helps keep costs down on indirect labor, which lowers prices, which means consumers can get more for their dollar.  None of that involves sending jobs overseas, which is what offshoring means.

And if you want an example of offshoring, Obama provides the perfect example:

The Obama campaign spent nearly $4,700 on telemarketing services from a Canadian telemarketing company called Pacific East between March and June, a Washington Free Beacon study of federal election filings shows.

Pacific East is not the only overseas telemarketing firm raking in cash from the president’s reelection campaign. Obama paid a call center in Manila, Philippines $78,314.10 for telemarketing services between the start of the campaign and March.

John Hinderaker channels his inner Obama (sorry, John!):

You really can’t make this stuff up. The Obama campaign is rapidly turning itself into a laughingstock.

Unfortunately, we don’t have to make this stuff up.  Obama provides us an almost never-ending stream of this material.

Got an Obamateurism of the Day? If you see a foul-up by Barack Obama, e-mail it to me at obamaisms@edmorrissey.com with the quote and the link to the Obamateurism. I’ll post the best Obamateurisms on a daily basis, depending on how many I receive. Include a link to your blog, and I’ll give some link love as well. And unlike Slate, I promise to end the feature when Barack Obama leaves office.

Illustrations by Chris Muir of Day by Day. Be sure to read the adventures of Sam, Zed, Damon, and Jan every day!

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