Mitt Romney, Jobs Creator?

1. Mr. Romney keeps waving his Bain credentials to show how he can run a business, (or a country), and create jobs.

what eye thynk: Bain is a private equity company, designed to make money for its investors. Even Rush Limbaugh agrees that these kinds of companies are not job creators. “That is not what they do." Jobs may be a bi-product, but it is never the stated goal and job cuts are very often the consequence of having your business taken over by a private equity firm.

Instead of looking at his record as a businessman at Bain, we should be looking instead at his record as the governor of Massachusetts. While Mr. Romney was governor, Massachusetts ranked 47 out of 50 states in job growth.  Why should we expect anything different to happen with him in the White House?


2. Mr. Romney insists that President Obama is entirely to blame for our jobless rate.

what eye thynk:  Our current unemployment rate is too high, we can all agree on that; but it is improving--slowly, but improving. In 2010, we added 940,000 new jobs. In 2011, we added 1.6M new jobs. The private sector added more jobs in June 2012 than at any time since the beginning of the recession. The public sector is not doing as well, but with a Congress that refuses to fund government programs, there can be no government hiring. Still, our current unemployment rate is lower today than at any point since March 2009 when businesses were still shedding employees like fleas because of the October 2008 financial meltdown. So, yes, the recovery is slow; but it is still a recovery.

Mitt Romney once said that blaming the president for the jobs market was “poppycock”. In 2004, when John Kerry was attacking Bush’s jobs record, Mr. Romney defended W by saying: “The people of America recognize that the slowdown in jobs that occurred during the early years of the Bush administration were the result of a perfect storm. And an effort by one candidate to somehow say, ‘Oh, this recession and the slowdown in jobs was the result of somehow this president magically being elected’, people in America just dismiss that as being poppycock…Every indication is that the economic policies adopted and pursued by this president are creating jobs…And so the people of America have to ask, ‘Do I stay with the president who is rebuilding the economy, who is creating jobs, or do you want to stop mid-stream and find someone new?”

For once, I agree with Mitt. Blaming the President for the jobs market is “poppycock” and I see no need to “stop mid-stream and find someone new”, especially someone who couldn’t do any better than 47 out of 50 when he was last in charge.

Quick Fact

Today's Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that the coal miners who appeared at that Mitt Romney rally in Beallsville, Ohio earlier this month were there because their company told them to be and they lost a day's pay in the bargain!  During a Monday morning interview at a West Virginia radio station, a top company official of Century Mine located in Pepper Pike, Ohio admitted that workers were told "that attending the Aug. 14 Romney event would be both mandatory and unpaid".

The US Congress, Where Political Blackmail is Business as Usual

A federal highway trust fund will expire at the end of this month. Last week, the US Senate passed a transportation bill that would provide millions of long term jobs while rebuilding our ailing infrastructure and which will guarantee that the money in the highway trust fund is not lost. The House of Representatives has their own stalled version of the bill. The House wants to add riders; among them two that would open the Arctic Wildlife Preserve and the entire continental shelf to drilling for oil and a third rider that would fast track the Keystone XL Pipeline.

what eye thynk:  In any given circumstance, either party can be caught playing this blackmail game.  "Add my riders to your bill or I won't vote for it and you'll be sorry!"  They all sound like small, petulant children threatening to take their ball and go home if the rules aren't changed to satisfy them.

When you look at your congressman's record, are you sure he supported the health care law or did he really vote for it because they added his tax-cuts-for-pig-farmers-who-raise-only-speckled-pigs-in-dry-counties rider?  Yes, that is ludicrous, but it makes a point.  Remember last year when Tea Party leadership threatened to vote no on any attempt to raise the debt limit unless a rider was added forcing gay service men and women back into the closet?  Really, how was that, in any way, going to improve our debt situation?

Political blackmail is a waste of time and resources.  Without all the adding and subtracting one-upmanship maybe Congress could actually accomplish something.  Eliminate what has become essentially a pay for my vote mentality. 

If you think sober speckled pig farmers deserve a tax cut, then present it as a single issue bill; because, frankly, if your rider isn't strong enough to be passed on its own, then it shouldn't be passed.