TPM: Romney’s Claim To Be A Job Creator Hits The Skids

[City Lights]

Brian Beutler January 6, 2012, 5:30 AM

Mitt Romney’s effort to disguise one of his biggest political liabilities has hit a major snag — one that may force him to abandon his most effective but misleading talking points about his work in the private sector..

Romney makes two different, but implicitly entwined claims: That while working in corporate management he created over 100,000 jobs and that — by comparison — Obama his presided over millions of job losses.

This is a false juxtaposition, based on two false claims. And so far, precious few reporters have pressed Romney or his campaign about it. But in the past several days, the veneer of plausibility has begun to peel leaving the candidate highly exposed to backlash from the press.

Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent, and Washington Monthly blogger Steve Benen have been Romney’s (and the press’) most consistent critics on this issue. After bringing it to light, Post fact checker Glenn Kessler buttonholed a Romney spokesman about the first claim — and found it to be unsubstantiated. It’s true only if you count Romney-managed companies that later hemorrhaged jobs.

Read the rest at TPM.com

I'm glad at least some in the media are calling him on his absurd claim. Let's hope more join in and keep up the pressure.

[JHB]

1. Krugman is also on this today

"Mr. Kessler immediately pointed out two problems with this tally. It’s “based on current employment figures, not the period when Romney worked at Bain,” and it “does not include job losses from other companies with which Bain Capital was involved.” Either problem, by itself, makes nonsense of the whole claim.

On the point about using current employment, consider Staples, which has more than twice as many stores now as it did back in 1999, when Mr. Romney left Bain. Can he claim credit for everything good that has happened to the company in the past 12 years? In particular, can he claim credit for the company’s successful shift from focusing on price to focusing on customer service (“That was easy”), which took place long after he had left the business world?

***
At this point, some readers may ask whether it isn’t equally wrong to say that Mr. Romney destroyed jobs. Yes, it is. The real complaint about Mr. Romney and his colleagues isn’t that they destroyed jobs, but that they destroyed good jobs.

When the dust settled after the companies that Bain restructured were downsized — or, as happened all too often, went bankrupt — total U.S. employment was probably about the same as it would have been in any case. But the jobs that were lost paid more and had better benefits than the jobs that replaced them. Mr. Romney and those like him didn’t destroy jobs, but they did enrich themselves while helping to destroy the American middle class."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/opinion/bain-barack-and-jobs.html?_r=1&hp

[City Lights]

4. Thanks...reading it now.

[SpiralHawk]

2. Romney is lying in the Republicon tradition

The Republicons have far and away exceeded the general political failing of telling lies -- and distorted the truth to a poisonously dangerous level.

Willard is just the latest exponent of Republicon distortion of truth. Glad he is getting called on his lies.

Perhaps the press will -- at long last -- finally beging to call the republicons out on their lies to the American people.

[liberal N proud]

3. I guress the Alternate Reality isn't working so well

Damn facts, they keep getting in the way of a good lie

[Stratetalker]

5. ...

The whole touting of saving the Olympics is a debatable point as well. Why would Republicans even care about Salt Lake's event when they openly disdained the Chicago bid here recently? I'm waiting for a voter to bring that up and let him sweat some billshit out like Olympics are people too.....

[Inuca]

6. I follow Sargent on Tweeter and

he has been relentlessly pushing this idea, keeps asking when will the media start asking questions about the validity of this claim.

[Icicle]

7. .....

It's not just his time at Bain..... when he was governor of MA the state was 47th in job creation - something I was witness to personally.....

[Scuba]

8. Challenge lies? Hey, that's not the media's job....

... they're just trying to maximize profits.



I'm still waiting for someone, anyone, to challenge the lie they all tell: Social Security is broke.