From the outset, Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign has said it's his experience as a "job creator" that makes him a strong candidate. In many ways, the spin has it backwards: jobs are arguably Romney's weakest issue.
In recent months, thanks in large part to his Republican rivals, Romney's private sector background has become a major point of contention. He did, after all, become extremely rich orchestrating leveraged buyouts and laying off thousands of American workers at a "vulture capitalist" firm.
But that's not Romney's only experience; he also served one term as governor of Massachusetts, where he was able to put his job-creating ideas into practice. How'd that turn out? As Jia Lynn Yang reports today, not especially well.
Massachusetts was one of just four states that by the time of the financial crisis still had not recovered all the jobs they had lost during the 2001 recession. [...]
Just one state had a bigger drop in its labor force during the same period, according to Sum — that was Louisiana, which was hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
"There was not one measure where the state did well under his term in office. We were below average and often near the bottom," said Sum, who is also the director of Northeastern's Center for Labor Market Studies.
All told, during Romney's tenure, his state's record on job creation was "one of the worst in the country," ranking 47th out of 50 states in job growth. It's one of the reasons Romney left office after one term deeply unpopular with his constituents.
Romney supporters can make a plausible case that some of the factors that hurt job creation in Massachusetts -- including the dot-com bust -- were not the governor's fault. That's true. But Romney also says job losses at the national level in early 2009 should be counted against President Obama, even though Obama inherited an economy on the brink of collapse, and that "excuses" don't count.
The result is an ugly picture. Romney oversaw mass layoffs in the private sector, and struggled badly to create jobs in the public sector, making it that much more challenging for the likely Republican nominee to connect with voters when unemployment is the top issue on the minds of voters.
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all Willard has is his 'professional experience'.
I've not been as scared as others, because he didn't do JACK as Governor, and in the private sector, he was a vulture capitalist. the ads write themselves.
combine that with his flip-flops, and I don't think the Obama team is afraid of Willard.
No matter how Romney and his latter day Wall St. saints try to spin it, the principal raison d'etra of leveraged buy out artists is to make money for themselves. They do this by borrowing heavily against the acquired company's assets, paying themselves dividends out of the proceeds, and hope the business struggles along long enough for it to be sold. More likely, it's liquidated. In either event, as in a Ponzi scheme the first in have taken care of themselves.
Even more distorting is that Romney tries offsetting the massive number of jobs he ended as an LBO specialist at Bain with the relatively small handful of jobs created when he was a venture capitalist when he first arrived on Beacon St. No wonder his job creation record as governor was so lousy and why his success at Bain was so profitable: All he knows how to do is shed jobs, not create them
Bush the Bankrupter bankrupted seven companies in a row before he bankrupted the United States, even though I made it clear to everyone I talked to in 2000 that he would do so based on his record as a destroyer of business.
There is no doubt that Romney would further destroy the American economy. So shall we learn from the mistakes of the past and vote for Obama the job creator?
This is just another one of the Romney's boomerang:
“He’s frequently telling us that he did not cause the recession, and that’s true. But he made it worse.” ~ Romney on Obama
Mitt Romney is not a normal American. He is an out of touch multi-millionaire that has never had to experience the true struggles of daily American life in his entire privileged existence. Mitt may try to cover his platinum soul, but his taxes and his record at Bain offer great insight into his character and background. Mitt Romney has probably led to more layoffs of working Americans than any man in this country. His entire fiscal policy platform is designed to give himself as many tax cuts and government giveaways as possible. http://www.sunstateactivist.org
Face it Mittens is NOT one of the 99% and can't even relate to the real issues that the 99% of Americans have! The GOP of course live in that fantasy Neverland, where Mittens less than "glowing accomplishments" will be spun around to appear as though he saved the day!!
And since have the GOP base are sheeple, and the other half are ignorant zealots awaiting the apocalypse they don't much mind the destruction cause "it's G-ds plan"....Psst democrats, take two friends and make sure that they bring two friends to the voting stations in November, otherwise, WE'RE SUNK!!!
Romney will be Bush for a 3rd term in terms of the economy and foreign policy.
Sadly, all of the other candidates are all down-hill from that already subterrainean level.
People tend to fear the unknown and what they don't understand. People with lower IQ's would tend to be more paranoid since they know and understand less than the higher IQ people. Smart people tend to play on people's fears in order to manipulate and gain power over them. While there is no guarantee that change is always better, change is usually better or at least the smarter people can figure out the flaws in change and better react and/or change the flaws for the better. I would love to have someone do a study on the median IQ of republinos, conservatives, Democrats, and liberals as the party of no and conservatives want less change and actually fight against change that the Democrats propose. This would lead one to conclude republinos have lower IQ's and thus want less change because they fear it. At one time people believed the earth was flat, was the center of the universe, and that people were created, not evolved. Birth control is a sin, all abortion is evil, women should earn less for the same amount of work, women don't belong in the work force; all of these are examples of outdated beliefs. The point I am clumsily trying to make is the republino conservatives have more fear than the "normal" person because they aren't as smart as the average person and since they believe change is bad they strongly and blindly oppose all change. They don't want the rich to pay more taxes because they earned more, they don't want abortion because it is indeed the killing of life without exception, they don't want universal health insurance mainly because that's a huge change. They opposed all the changes the Democrats proposed and hence voted in favor of the tea party and more conservatives in 2010. Conservatives are paranoid and hence want a stronger military at any cost, are afraid of unions because they fear union members receive more benefits than they do and the list goes on. We liberals must be more patient and caring for the republinos for indeed ignorance is not bliss and they must be shown a better way in spite of themselves and their paranoia. After all, there is only one Earth and we all live on it.