When Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, it was 47th out of 50 states in job creation, 47th out of 51 if you include Washington, D.C. Yet his campaign touts that state unemployment during his term was only 4.7%. (What is it about the digits 4 and 7 to Romney? Is he a numerologist in addition to being a Mormon?) But if Romney wasn’t creating much in the way of jobs, how can this low unemployment rate be accounted for? According to Andrew Sum, professor of economics at Northwestern University, as well as director of Northeastern’s Center for Labor Market Studies, the national unemployment rate was dropping, and people who had lost their jobs in Massachusetts stopped looking for work or moved out of state, removing themselves from the state workforce and unemployment statistics.
"The unemployment rate fell only because people were leaving the workforce in droves during Romney's term. There was not one measure where the state did well under his term in office. We were below average and often near the bottom. "Under his administration, Massachusetts lost a huge number of blue-collar jobs that provided an opportunity for the middle class,” Sum has said in interviews with the Boston Globe and the Washington Post.
As governor, Romney did what he plans to do as president: he cut spending and government services. In this fashion, he proved that cutting spending and government services does nothing to grow the economy and create jobs. As president he would prove this again but on a national level. Well, actually. George W. Bush has already proven it, Romney would just reaffirm the results.
But the thing is, Romney’s supporters will never look beneath the phony veneer of economic achievements that he’s trying to peddle to the nation. Romney is no more a job creator than he is presidential material. As for being successful in business, the Bush boys proved you can stink as a businessman yet still make a lot of money if your dad is a powerful politician with vast political, business and legal contacts. The difference between Romney and President Obama is that anyone whose wealthy father ran the largest auto factory in the world and later become a state governor with extensive political, business and legal contacts can easily get started in business and make lots of money, maybe even become a one-term state governor. It’s quite a bit more difficult for someone from a poor, single parent household to make it into Harvard Law School, be chosen editor of the Harvard Law Review, be elected state and then U.S. Senator, and finally president of the United States. Romney’s career was made for him; Barack Obama is a self-made man.
With no real accomplishments to boast about, Romney’s team employs lies and deception and attempts to pile false accusations on Obama, which is standard operating procedure for what passes for today as Republican Party, at least the way it’s currently being run by the Koch Brothers, along with the likes of Philip Anschutz, Richard Mellon Scaife, Richard DeVos, and Rupert Murdoch. They understand that Republicans are sheep, accustomed to being members of a flock through their fervent attendance of church every Sunday. Sheep don’t mind being fleeced if they’re unaware it’s happening, and these men have become expert sheep-shearing shepherds.
Abortion? Gay marriage? Illegal immigrants? Terrorists? The war on Christmas? Forget all that. These are just hot button issues to get the flock moving as one to the slaughterhouse, led by the Judas Goat, who changes every four to eight years. This is Romney’s year to play the goat. For the one-percenters have two goals and two goals only: no taxes on the rich and no government regulation on big business. A codicil to this is private profits and socialize debts and losses. They use the vast media outlets they own to push the hot button issues to get the flock scared, to feel they’re being surrounded by packs of liberal, socialist, communist, weak on terrorism, big spending, anti-god-fearing, abortion loving, gay wolves. Romney is not the biggest nor the best goat to lead the sheep to safety but he’s the only one they’ve got this time around. So they meekly, enthusiastically, willing allow Romney to lead them to certain economic and financial slaughter if he becomes president. Although Romney has yet to release his proposed economic proposals, what he has repeated is the century-old mantra of the top 1%: no taxes on the rich and no government regulation on big business. That’s all he’s got.
Being sheep, his Republican supporters are too stupid to understand that in the past 30 years of big business/Republican control of the federal government, they’ve either seen their wages fall way behind those of corporate CEO and officers or lost their jobs and retirement altogether, and many have lost their small businesses and their homes. But since the Republican Party wraps itself in God and country and the sheep consider themselves American patriots, they turn their fearful sheep’s eyes to the dreaded, baleful, evil wolf packs encircling their flocks and then look to the latest Goat to lead them to the “safety” of the abattoir. A quick blow to the head and slit of the throat and the poor little lambs never knew what hit them. And there’s a new generation of sheep being born all the time.
Obama will most likely win re-election this year—if his campaign can rally enough support among the higher-thinking animals. After his loss, Romney will most likely be put out to pasture as a panelist on Fox, which is appropriate since foxes are natural predators of sheep, too. Perhaps Romney is a fox in goat clothing?
For more on the twin goals of the 1%, read Norman Goldman’s excellent autobiography “Journey to Justice”. He lays it out better than anyone else in the liberal media; simple, clear, and concise.