Romney's Wrecking Ball Of A Record

Peter Daou argues on Twitter that Mitt Romney is a serious threat to Obama on the economic issues:

Romney is a threat because he can focus on a dead simple message: 'I'm a successful businessman, I'll create jobs and fix the economy' #2012

That argument would have merit if in fact Mitt Romney didn't have a horrendous and easily exploitable record as a CEO, as Rev. Al Sharpton (filling in for Ed Schutlz) discusses with E.J. Dionne.



Debbie Wasserman Schultz also went after Romney's record on jobs as Governor of Massachusetts.Br



Brett Arends at CBS Marketwatch sums it up as he noted early last year that Romney was going to make this play:

The Republican contender was the governor of Massachusetts from January 2003 to January 2007. And during that time, according to the U.S. Labor Department, the state ranked 47th in the entire country in jobs growth. Fourth from last. 

The only ones that did worse? Ohio, Michigan and Louisiana. In other words, two rustbelt states and another that lost its biggest city to a hurricane. 

The Massachusetts jobs growth over that period, a pitiful 0.9%, badly lagged other high-skill, high-wage, knowledge economy states like New York (2.7%), California (4.7%) and North Carolina (7.6%). 

The national average: More than 5%. 

This was after four years. So far Obama has been in office for just one year. How was Romney's performance by his first anniversary? 

Fiftieth out of fifty. 

That's right. In Romney's first year in charge, Massachusetts ranked dead last in America in jobs growth. 

And keep in mind 2003 was the start of the "Bush Boom". Romney was the worst jobs governor in 2003 and he never got much better.

If Romney wants to run on his jobs record, he's going to get slaughtered.   But what about his record as a businessman?  Well you know, Romney made a lot of money -- by screwing over American workers.

While much of Romney's presidential campaign will focus on his executive experience in the Massachusetts statehouse, the former Bay State governor and GOP presidential hopeful's calls as co-founder of Bain Capital have had a much bigger impact on the American consumer so far. 

The venture-capital-turned-leveraged-buyout firm helped fund Romney's personal fortune, believed to be between $190 million and $300 million, and provided $45 million of the $110 million he spent on his unsuccessful 2008 presidential run. 

Sometimes the calls didn't quite work out, as was the case when Bain Capital and then-aspiring Senate candidate Romney bought American Pad & Paper Co. for $5 million in 1992. Bain charged Ampad advisory fees, used it to buy a few other office-supply makers and ran the company's debt from $11 million in 1993 to nearly $400 million in 1999. 

Meanwhile, it acquired an Ampad plant in Marion, Ill., in 1994 and shuttered the 200-worker facility the next year after workers held a strike over layoffs and pay cuts. 

The labor strife was used against Romney by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in the 1994 race for Kennedy's Senate seat and, though Romney gave Kennedy the toughest contest of his career, Romney lost by 18 points. 

The subsequent closing of a 185-worker Ampad plant in Buffalo, N.Y., despite a $50 million public stock offering only three years earlier (and Ampad's ensuing bankruptcy in 2000 and liquidation in 2001) made that transaction one of Romney's few regrets during the Bain years and the kind of thing he told The New York Times he would "be more sensitive" about if he could do it over again — despite helping himself and Bain investors pocket $100 million from the deal. 

Yes, Romney made some great investments, but at every turn he was a union-busting, worker-bashing greed head who made millions off of the little guy by "streamlining" companies and taking advantage of record-breaking American productivity...while real wages have stagnated for decades and her personally pocketed tons of money as CEO.

Let Romney run on that record.  Certainly worked well in 2008, didn't it?

Oh, and the latest Quinnipiac poll has Obama beating Romney by 6 points, in line with a number of other polls in the last several months that shows Obama beating the entire GOP field.