Mitt Romney 'Binders Full Of Women' Claim Misleads
Source: Huffington Post
Mitt Romney raised eyebrows during the presidential debate Tuesday night when he claimed that as governor of Massachusetts, he had been so dismayed at the lack of female cabinet candidates that he sent women's groups out to find them.
"I went to a number of women's groups and said, 'Can you help us find folks?' and they brought us whole binders full of women," he said.
In fact, Romney did not direct women's groups to bring him female candidates, Boston Pheonix reporter David Bernstein points out. A non-partisan collaboration of womens groups called Massachusetts Government Appointments Project (MassGAP) was responsible for the effort in 2002, when the group's leaders realized that women held only 30 percent of the top appointed positions in the state.
...
This statement, too, is misleading. While 42 percent of Romneys appointments during his first 2-1/2 years as governor were women, the number of women in high-level appointed positions actually declined to 27.6 percent during his full tenure as governor, according to a 2007 MassGAP study.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/17/romney-binders-full-of-women_n_1972425.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
Does Mitt Romney really think women aren't capable of checking out the facts? He really doesn't give us much credit, does he?
Berlum
(7,044 posts)He is a Compleat Republican.
Wednesdays
(17,413 posts)I think he's trying to compensate for something.
durablend
(7,465 posts)Being that's he's a total Richard.
underthematrix
(5,811 posts)mittnocchio is a liar and apparently has a poor grasp of reality.
spooky3
(34,483 posts)42 to 27.6 in just a few years...and he couldn't find qualified women to replace them or to take positions that men left during that time?
Same ol', same ol'...
liberal N proud
(60,346 posts)How many statements has he walked back or changed since this campaign began?
Remmah2
(3,291 posts)Gotta read between the lines on this one.
BlueStreak
(8,377 posts)I know whenever I have recruited for a position it was always STACKS of resumes. The process is something like:
1) Skim the resumes. Separate into different piles based on the first review. The majority will never be pursued.
2) Read the resumes in detail and create a pile of candidates you want to pursue.
3) Do interviews, reference checks, etc.
4) For the winning applicant, but the resume in the employee file.
I don't see how a binder helps, but maybe they put the resumes from the short list into a binder for Romney's review.
Or maybe it was more extensive. Maybe they required 10 years of tax returns for each candidate ad created a separate binder for each candidate.
sofa king
(10,857 posts)But seriously, I'm pretty sure he chose that word half-carefully. Any finished product I ever sent to the feds or a partner or a chief had to be meticulously indexed, punched, divided and bound. It almost seems to be some sort of a ritual in law and government.
Romney has always "had a guy" for that (and in his case, it just might always have been an actual guy, not a gal). He was above mere resumes. He got reports. In binders.
"The guy" is the person who oversees the process, has the resumes collected, reviewed, and checked. The various documents are assembled into a report on a finalist candidate, with of course an all-important executive summary, and those are collected and bound and presented to the boss with some solemnity, because it's always nearly late and it's always someone beneath the guy's ass if there's a typo or an error or a mis-collation.
I think Romney chose the word because it highlights to his own importance, which is far more important than "people," especially "women."
Sorry, I've been reading Wonkette a lot lately. It makes me snide.
BlueStreak
(8,377 posts)sofa king
(10,857 posts)I'm afraid I don't know or understand China well enough to know if their own fine porcelain ceilings have been broken yet. I rather doubt it, considering their heavy overall preference for male children.
My better half wants to ask a question of Mitt and his wife, one that I think cuts straight to the bone: "have you ever changed a diaper?" But if I were asking, I'd bring along a doll and a diaper, so he can demonstrate.
sofa king
(10,857 posts)I missed the two important punchlines!
1) Romney didn't ask for the study.
2) Romney didn't read them. The number of women in state government declined under him.
Serves me right for taking a single sentence that came out of that snake's mouth as plausible.
AzDar
(14,023 posts)BlueStreak
(8,377 posts)Women don't use Google, do they? They have their husbands (or servants) do that for them, right?
wordpix
(18,652 posts)so progressive as to request "binders of women" to hire
BlueStreak
(8,377 posts)wordpix
(18,652 posts)Squinch
(51,022 posts)Wonder if that was what Mitt was thinking about. We KNOW he wasn't thinking about women executives, because, hey! Women can't be executives! They have to get home to make dinner!
...what a despicable dick...
gateley
(62,683 posts)Motivated by anything other than politics.
Cosmocat
(14,575 posts)it pretty much runs in the red by the time he strings 2 words together, but that little diddy SCREAMED fricken bullshit.
toby jo
(1,269 posts)Can we force-feed fact checks to our right-wing buddies ? Everybody grab a righty and shove it down their throat or something?
Maeve
(42,288 posts)We're all making dinner and picking up our kids from school--who has time to fact-check the bishop? And why would we even doubt him? Father knows best, after all! (Are my pearls straight?)
off
sad sally
(2,627 posts)Loved your 'pearls straight' line - was raised by a worked-two-jobs widowed Mom, with three little kids, who always thought the June Cleaver pearls & dressed up for dinner at home was too phony.
Ms. Toad
(34,102 posts)and created the binders in the first place so he would have no excuse not to appoint women to appropriate positions.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)beac
(9,992 posts)Time to three-hole punch him into the circular file.
Coyotl
(15,262 posts)In front of a global audience, he could not control his own mouth and tell the truth. He had to inflate himself far beyond what the facts support.
It does not matter much (nor does he matter much anymore) why he is compelled to tell self-aggrandizing lies. What will prove most intyeresting is the follow-up with the people who created the so-called "binders full of women" and their telling of the true history of this tale.
CrispyQ
(36,528 posts)What a freakin' moran he is.
4lbs
(6,865 posts)He talked about hiring women.
That wasn't the question. Nearly every business hires women.
DID HE PAY THE WOMEN HE HIRED THE SAME SALARY THAT HE DID THE MEN IN EQUIVALENT POSITIONS?
He never said either way.
However, we now get from one of his advisors that he wouldn't have signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009 if he were President.
Thus, one can surmise that he didn't pay women equally, and doesn't support equal pay.
gateley
(62,683 posts)sad sally
(2,627 posts)Mitt Romneys campaign just cant figure out whether he supports equal pay for women or not. When asked last April about Romneys view on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which restored equal pay rights the Roberts Court cut back in 2007, Romneys campaign responded with an awkward six second silence followed by a promise to get back with an answer to the question. The campaign never answered whether Romney supports the law, merely stating that he is not looking to change current law. That is, of course, until last night, when Romneys senior adviser Ed Gillespie said that Romney was opposed to it at the time and would not have signed the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. And that admission lasted all of a few hours. Gillespie now claims that Romney never weighed in on it.
The truth, however, is that we do not have to wonder about what Romneys view on equal pay for women is. We do not even have to wait for his campaign to reveal Romneys unspoken view on this issue, because the question can be answered in just one picture. This one:
Thats Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the Ledbetter opinion stripping many women of their right to equal pay for equal work. When asked how he would select his Supreme Court appointments if elected president, Romney named Alito, along with Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia and Thomas, as his models. All four of Romneys model justices voted against Lilly Ledbetter and against equal pay for women.
Romneys promise to place more Alitos on the Supreme Court matters much more than his claim that he is not currently interested in enacting anti-woman legislation. Indeed, it would matter even more than if Romney affirmatively promised to sign pro-woman legislation if elected president. Here is why:
Federal law requires many employees who face pay discrimination to meet a very brief deadlineoften as short as six monthsor else they lose their ability to challenge their employers unlawful actions. The flip side of this, however, is that this clock starts anew every time an employee receives a lower paycheck than her or his coworkers due to unlawful discrimination. As a unanimous Supreme Court explained in its 1986 decision in Bazemore v. Friday, [e]ach weeks paycheck that delivers less to [an African-American] than to a similarly situated white is a wrong actionable under federal law. Because gender discrimination is banned by the same law that prohibits race discrimination, Bazemores holding also benefited women.
Or, at least, it did until Justice Alito got his hands on it. Alitos majority opinion in Ledbetter established that, if a womans employer makes a decision early in her career that undermines her earning power for decades, the woman must challenge that decision almost immediately or her rights are lostand they are lost even if she did not discover she was a victim of pay discrimination until years later. Notably, in reaching this decision, the 5-4 majority relied heavily on a 1989 decision, Lorance v. AT&T Technologies, even though Lorance was overruled by an Act of Congress in 1991.
http://thinkprogress.org/
spooky3
(34,483 posts)long for the Congress to agree with her and for the President to sign the LL Act.
Maineman
(854 posts)Mr. Romney, you are a religious man. You have given a ton of money to the Mormon church (at least that is your claim). I am wondering what your church's position is on personal integrity, on not lying to people.
Mr. Romney, the Mormon version of life after death is that if you have been good enough you might qualify to be the higher power of your own special planet somewhere out there in the universe. When you reflect on your own life, your business dealings, your political activites, do you feel you will qualify for your own planet? Does giving money to the church help you qualify for your own planet? Or, have you given up and decided to just go for top level power here on earth?
Mr. Romney, by your example, you are teaching your children and grandchildren that lying is acceptable and potentially useful. Are you comfortable being this kind of parent and grandparent?
olddad56
(5,732 posts)nm
tclambert
(11,087 posts)"Binders full of women." (I love you, Mitt. You are the best opponent ever. (By "best" of course, I mean stupidest.))
See, he supposedly had to ask women's groups for a list of competent women because he didn't know any and none of the men on his staff knew any. That's my takeaway from that crazy stupid story.
olddad56
(5,732 posts)because this guy could be an even bigger bungler.
olddad56
(5,732 posts)Retrograde
(10,162 posts)He didn't meet any women working at Bain, or in the companies he destroyed, who would be fit to be in his cabinet? He had to ask outside groups to go find him some? He does live in the same century as the rest of us, right?
hughee99
(16,113 posts)especially when offering a (relatively) low paying government job that will likely end in 4 years.
spooky3
(34,483 posts)hughee99
(16,113 posts)spooky3
(34,483 posts)but also to replace the women who left, once people's attention was turned elsewhere (see other DU threads that document this).
He obviously was able to attract men with those salaries, so I am not buying salaries as the reason that women were not in the pool from the start.
hughee99
(16,113 posts)I don't recall him finding a whole lot of men OR women who went from very high salaries in the business world to working for him as governor. Maybe it's because of the salaries, maybe it's because people who had already worked with him didn't want to do it unless they were very well paid for it.
spooky3
(34,483 posts)You are making excuses for him that do not make sense.
hughee99
(16,113 posts)There are a lot of PEOPLE (men and women) in the business world, but Romney only interacted, worked with, or knew a relatively small percentage of them. Those people were likely pretty well paid. Romney don't strike me as the kind of guy who is on a first name basis with the new interns or even the facilities or IT manager.
No, I can't think of any WOMEN he hired from that circle. I also can't think of any MEN he hired from THAT circle. If he even offered any of them a job, the PEOPLE (again, men and women) probably didn't want to take a pay cut for the "pleasure" of working with him in a temporary job.
You are suggesting he didn't hire or didn't know any qualified women from Bain. I'm saying he didn't seem to hire much of ANYONE from Bain, regardless of gender, when he was governor.
wordpix
(18,652 posts)joanbarnes
(1,723 posts)Blue Owl
(50,514 posts)n/t