The Washington Post committed an edgy act of journalism by actually reading the SEC prospectuses (prospecti?) of companies where Bain had big investments under Mitt Romney’s watch, and, no surprise, those companies bragged about their outsourcing.
Unlike the immigration surprise, which they pretty much ducked this week, the Romney campaign had to have known that Bain did a lot of outsourcing, so their stonewalling response is a bit puzzling. I would have thought they’d have some kind of re-branding strategy, saying that those jobs “self-deported” or something like that.
Update: Thanks to everyone who caught Glenn Kessler’s Four Pinocchio stupidity in Wednesday’s Post:
The Obama campaign apparently loves to ding former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney with the charge of “outsourcing.” On several occasions, we have faulted the campaign for its claims, apparently to little avail.
dubo
b-b-but the very same washington post gave Obama a rare and extreme four pinocchios for saying Romney outsourced jobs at Bain!
c u n d gulag
In all fairness, now that the cat’s out of the bag, Bain will probably work to create more jobs here.
Ones they can “insource” low-wage foreigner workers into.
Hey, they’ll be “American Jobs!” now, right?
And what happened that the WaPo actually covered this story?
Fred Hiatt on vacation on some tropical island, with no phone or internet access?
Napoleon
@dubo:
That deserves a link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/4-pinocchios-for-obamas-newest-anti-romney-ad/2012/06/20/gJQAGux6qV_blog.html?tid=pm_pop
Schlemizel
American workers have it too good and have to understand that in a global economy they must compete with workers in China and India or wherever our masters can coerce the lowest compensation package. Think Northern Marianas!
That includes more than just wages and benefits you understand total, compensation covers things like worker health and safety as well as incidental costs like environmental protection and product safety standards.
Willard had no choice but to outsource like mad – its for our own good you see.
By the time these bastards are done we’ll all be grateful we have destroyed the Earth and brought our time on it to an end.
maya
Yes, but with more tax cuts for Mitt and his class they’ll be able to create thousands upon thousands of one of greatest of American innovative jobs with a bright future of ascendency: Assistant Pool Boy.
Raven
@Schlemizel: How was the interview?
Ash Can
Mudge
Call centers, of course, generally go to India where they speak unintelligible English, as opposed to no English at all.
And it’s just like Romney to not care one whit about Americans losing their jobs when Bain companies go overseas, but be all concerned when he can garner a vote or two. He’s running for office, for goodness sakes.
Raven
@Mudge: “Hello this is Bonnie. . .can I helps you?
amk
@dubo: So it’s the case of one hand not knowing a shite about what the other hand is doing. Isn’t it about time that clueless pos glenn kessler is kicked out as ‘fact-checker’ ?
WereBear
Explaining is for the little people.
Mitt Romney doesn’t have to conform to reality! He has so much money that reality conforms to him.
I don’t always oppress the peasants, but when I do, I pretend I don’t!
JPL
In fairness if Americans agreed to work for two dollars a hour with no benefits, out sourcing wouldn’t be necessary. It’s the greedy workers who caused this.
Raven
Check out this Balloon pic!
Raven
Check out this Balloon pic!
ericblair
Worst. Candidate. Ever. I’d bet the sun coming up every morning catches him by surprise. I’m wondering which it is: his campaign team briefs the Rombot on vulnerabilities and he just ignores them, or the campaign team is a bunch of weenie yes-men who can’t or won’t mention even the possibility that Rmoney may have some speedbumps on his way to his coronation.
Schlemizel
@Raven: It went better than expected – they said they will be making me an offer. I’d probably be pretty excited now if the darkness wasn’t so strong at the moment
Thanks for asking BTW
SteveinSC
@Schlemizel: Well in all seriousness, we know Bill Clinton and a sizable number of Democrats bought into this globalization (the hot MBA theory) and that companies like GM etc., might not be able to compete and SHOULD go under. America would have to maintain its middle class by competing in areas it could compete. Enter that blubber mouthed vulture Phil Gramm with his “degree” in Plutocratic Economics. NAFTA, CAFTA, bullshit. Abolish Glass-Steagall and the race back to 1928 was on. Now what? There still is a question unanswered: “Quo vadis the Middle Class”? Will Americans be able to maintain our standard of living, pay for our social safety net, our health care, etc., and still have some sort of stable economy?
Raven
@Schlemizel: Cool! It’s always darkest just before the dawn. . .
flukebucket
@ericblair:
I would put my money on weenie yes men but the more I see of Rmoney the more I wonder just how much of a blank sheet of paper he is. I can’t help but see him as the emptiest of empty suits but in fairness I have to attribute that to my raging Obotism.
But still, Rmoney does seem to me to be an airhead.
Rob in CT
@SteveinSC:
True. The Dems don’t have the answers. Neither do I. I’m not sure that globalization was avoidable. I don’t think trying to turtle up would have worked out. The fact is that when communism fell, a shit-ton of cheap labor became available. Capital was going to flow to that labor and use it. I think policy choices could have mitigated things somewhat, but I can’t see how going all protectionist would have worked out any better in the long run. Granted, in the long run we’re all dead, etc., etc.
ET
1. Among the big players outsourcing was good so that is a positive point. Of course that ran up against all the other GOP voters (and not a few politicians) who railed against outsourcing (despite that this was capitalism at “work). This is why Team Romney hoped/counted on number 2.
2. That “journalists” would/t bother being you know, journalists.
I guess that hoped that if they ignored it long enough Washington press complacency could be counted on to not bother or at least soft pedal the issue.
Splitting Image
We at Bain Capital would like to thank you for your twenty years service at American Industry Inc.
Your job will self-deport in five minutes…
beltane
Without the media whores hustling for this creature 24/7, his campaign would be DOA. Unfortunately, our press corps is made up of the most tireless whores in human history.
MattF
It’s journalism in the “Oh, lookee, sky is blue and grass is green” sense, but I guess that’s better than “sky is green and grass is blue.” Actual journalism would look at the cash flow and figure out who profited from outsourcing, but that would mean getting involved with those weird numbers-and-facts thingums.
Elizabelle
@c u n d gulag:
To make up for it, Glenn Kessler gave 4 Pinocchios to a David Plouffe remark that might be provably true.
Topic was the GOP working to sabotage the economy.
Sounds like a liberal fantasy to me, doesn’t it?
Not linking.
PS: WaPost has shone this week in their coverage of the UVa president dismissal. 3 cheers there.
Maude
@beltane:
Do not insult whores, they don’t deserve being compared to the media.
General Stuck
The current delusional mentality of the right wing, to include those presidential candidates aspiring to be right wing, by double talking his self into a pretzel, cannot be viewed without 3 dimension glasses, and a bucket of popcorn.
They have elevated themselves to above the fray of any vestige of twoof. Romney is running as Alice on Acid, from the business end of the looking glass. Strolling through one campaign disaster to the next, like his chickenshit speech at Latino functions.
Meanwhile, Karl Rove is loading up the Clown Cannon with billions in bullshit, to anesthetize our senses to render mentally insensible. Hoping to guide the gullible to a snipe hunt on election day.
It won’t work on minorities, with those folks awake and alert to dubious electioneering, but it could work on increasing swathes of clueless white people, fixated on the shape of their own navels.
Then there is the coming decision on the ACA, that could change stuff to something else entirely.
beltane
@Maude: That’s true. Most of them are victims themselves. Our media are more like the traffickers who lure and coerce people into prostitution. Propaganda is just another way to lure and coerce people into doing things which will likely cost them their dignity if not their life.
beltane
Oh noes, it looks like the Romneys are as cruel to their horses as to their dogs and human employees:http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/ann-romneys-high-horse
Say what you will about the British royal family, but I don’t think Queen Elizabeth would ever strap one of her Corgis to the roof of her Land Rover nor do I think she would be into the poisoning of her horses.
NancyDarling
Fix your spelling, mistermix. Or is “Gudalajara” some insider joke that I am clueless about.
Maude
@beltane:
Nice point and oh so true.
Waldo
The only thing they find puzzling is their inability to make questions disappear as easily as jobs.
GoodGuyGreg
Here’s what someone needs to do – go buy “thankyoumitt.com” – i just checked, it’s available – then get some video of some Chinese factory workers and Indian call-center workers all yelling “thanks Mitt” then put together a fancy video talking about how Mittens brought all these jobs to Asia & run that shit in Ohio & Michigan.
You’re welcome, DNC.
...now I try to be amused
@WereBear:
Ha! Mitt Romney: The Least Interesting Man in the World.
Schlemizel
@SteveinSC: The ‘centrists’ at the DNC will be the death of us all. They are the ones who decided to abandon the labor unions in favor of our masters crumbs. They were foolish enough to believe that there would be some new thing we could do that nobody else could or that American business was smart enough to know that the destruction of the American middle class would bring about the end of the supply of consumers for the crap they were selling. Neither is true.
As to were goes the middle class? straight into the toilet! We will not recover from the current economic malaise (we are not allowed to call it a depression) until people can afford to start buying crap again. Since nobody buys crap in the quantities nor at the prices of Americans that means we may never recover. EVER.
I said this more than a decade ago, who will buy $150 running shoes if workers are all making $2 an hour? nobody. Nobody at Foxconn will ever have enough money to but an iPad (hell one sold a kidney to buy one!). When every worker is a Foxconn worker who will buy the crap they produce? Our masters perhaps but there won’t be enough of them to keep the Foxconns of the world running.
Schlemizel
@Rob in CT:
The St. Reagan administration held a large conference in Mexico explaining to US manufacturers how to move jobs out of the US. They had just gotten legislation passed to make it economically beneficial to move those jobs and wanted to insure that US companies knew how to take full advantage of the new rules.
It got scant attention in the media of the time, loud screams from labor unions and nothing was done about it.
A Conservative Teacher
Well now I don’t know what to believe- one day the Washington Post calls Obama stupid for claiming that Romney supports outsourcing because the Romney is a decent guy and makes money if American workers do well, and the next day the Washington Post ‘discovers’ that Romney hates Americans and wants to move all of their jobs overseas because he is an evil guy or something. I wonder which one is closer to the truth?
A Conservative Teacher
Oh, I get it now- Romney was really good at growing these companies, and when these companies grew they added call centers and other offices in other nations too. So because of Romney, jobs were created here AND jobs were created over there, thus ‘outsourcing jobs’ (although I don’t really think that is what outsourcing is). Makes sense now- he’s too good. Maybe we need someone instead like Obama who kills jobs here AND there.
Schlemizel
@A Conservative Teacher:
nice try moran. Sneak into a thread after yoy assume anyone is watching and they flat out lying about Rmoney & the industrial rapists at Bain. That way it will look as if nobody disagrees with you.
The record is quite clear Bain money destroyed many more jobs in the US than it created in the world and created more jobs in the third world than it did in the US. To pretend otherwise is to either be painfully ignorant of the established evidence or hoping you can influence the mouth breathers who don’t know better into slicing their throats by voting Rmoney.