Mitt Romney, Outsourced
By Charles P. Pierce, June 22 2012 at 10:46AM
This vast new Washington Post report about how Willard Romney and his money-chewing friends got really wealthy by investing in companies dedicated to shipping American jobs overseas is yet one more reason why the Obama campaign really shouldn’t have slacked off from tearing into Romney’s career at Bain Capital just because Cory Booker, and Ed Rendell, and Bill Clinton got nervous about it. It also should set off another spate of really remarkable lying from the Republican candidate over the next few days…..
While economists debate whether the massive outsourcing of American jobs over the last generation was inevitable, Romney in recent months has lamented the toll it’s taken on the U.S. economy. He has repeatedly pledged he would protect American employment by getting tough on China. “They’ve been able to put American businesses out of business and kill American jobs,” he told workers at a Toledo fence factory in February. “If I’m president of the United States, that’s going to end.”
Willard Romney: friend of the working man. In Shanghai.
(Of course, the Post felt itself obligated to include the now-mandatory non sequitur disclaimer about the magic of the global economy. While the export of jobs has been disruptive for many workers and communities in the United States, outsourcing has been a powerful economic force. It has often helped lower the prices that American consumers pay for products and created a global supply chain that has made U.S. companies more nimble and profitable. Nimbleness! It takes some nifty footwork to tap-dance your way past your conscience in the Marianas Islands Free Enterprise Zone.)
American business stopped caring about the political entity that is the United States of America a very long time ago. We have been propagandized repeatedly that the global economy was either the greatest thing that ever happened ever, or so unstoppable a force that the best our tired old democracy could do is get along within it the best it could. The basic questions of national sovereignty and corporate accountability were drowned out or brushed aside. Now, we have a presidential candidate who is a perfect product of that new transnational economic system. Willard Romney could be — hell, should be — the vehicle through whom we pass judgment on all of it.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/romney-bain-overseas-jobs-9947349 or http://bit.ly/PIeVbY
Illustration by WMxdesign. http://www.flickr.com/photos/30835791@N07/3437966463/sizes/z/in/photostream/