Has anyone considered the possibility that Mitt Romney may have an addiction to outsourcing jobs? I only ask because he seems to do it a lot.
For example, back in 2002 when Mitt Romney swooped in to save the Salt Lake City Olympics from themselves, he outsourced to Burma the manufacturing of the torchbearer uniforms. TO BURMA — with the juntas and the bloodshed and the brutal military regime.
Human rights advocates, needless to say, were outraged. Outsourcing jobs to Burma is so bad, that it’s like — it’s like — outsourcing jobs to motherfucking Burma:
For Romney, the 2002 Olympics anecdote represents another instance of outsourcing under his stewardship, as President Barack Obama’s reelection team continues to assail him for shipping jobs overseas while at private equity firm Bain Capital. It also exposes an embarrassing oversight in allowing the uniforms to be manufactured in Burma, which until just last year was controlled by a brutal military regime.
According to reports in 2002, the decision to outsource the torchbearer uniforms to Burma caused an uproar among human rights advocates and trade groups. It prompted the head of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions to write a letter to the International Olympic Committee, stating that “No responsible organization or body should make use of products originating in Burma.”
trollhattan
Nah, made in Myanmar, not Burma. Perfect logic, that. It’s not salt, it’s sodium chloride.
Rmoney better watch out or he’s going to lose his Aung San Suu Kyi endorsement.
jo6pac
I need a little help wasn’t Burma on some kind we don’t do business with you list that Amerika has at this time? I know some things have changed this yr.
c u n d gulag
What, The Mariana’s Islands slave-labor was too American?
Reed and Abramoff had better deals?
What?
SatanicPanic
I didn’t outsource those jobs to Sri Lanka, I outsourced them to Ceylon.
anthrosciguy
Oh you may know it as Myanmar, but it will always be Burma to me.
Keith
@anthrosciguy: Beat me to it.
Omnes Omnibus
@anthrosciguy: Why did Constantinople get the works?
Nutella
@jo6pac:
Wikipedia sez:
So the 2002 Olympics deal was iffy and apparently inspired more restrictions in 2003.
Restrictions have been reduced this year due to changes in Myanmar.
MikeJ
@jo6pac: The Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act wasn’t enacted until 2003, but I’m still looking for the text of the Customs and Trade Act of 1990 which had a section on Burma. §138 if you want to look it up.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s nobody business but the Turks.
Violet
Mitt Romney doesn’t want to be President of the United States of America. He wants to be President of New Spain.
Rafer Janders
Holland! I was supposed to be in The Netherlands! Someone’s head is gonna roll for this!
trollhattan
Also, too, after yesterday’s WillardVision ad featuring a singing president was pulled, they’ve come out with another claiming, “Obama’s friends are doing fine,but the middle class isn’t.” Featuring a venture capitalist nobody outside California has heard of.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/#storylink=cpy
These folks just don’t have it, whatever “it” is.
Robin G.
Myanmar was Burma in Asia
Now it’s Myanmar, not Burma in Asia
So if you’ve made clothes in Burma in Asia
They’ll be waiting in Myanmar!
Xecky Gilchrist
@Violet: Or maybe of this place with bigger borders.
Rafer Janders
Mitt Romney was head of the Salt Lake Olympic Committee (SLOC). Burma was ruled by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC).
Coincidence? I think not….
maya
If torchbearer skins
Are not your fave
Re-skin them all
With Burma slave
Culture of Truth
Minimum wage
Makes you irate
Why not
Manufacture in
A police state
Burma Slave
redshirt
Typical Prussians.
Rafer Janders
Not to mention that Burma was officially soshulist. So not only did he take the work away from Americans, he also gave it to a bunch of damn dirty soshulists….
Culture of Truth
Burma Freedom and Democracy Act (BFDA)
That law was a big f**** deal !
BGinCHI
Now I have that They Might Be Giants song stuck in my head:
Istanbul or Constantinople….
Steve
There are some winning comments in this thread.
Ash Can
Someone should tell Romney that, yeah, those Iranians are a real problem, but the Persians are swell.
BGinCHI
@Yutsano: Have you ever eaten at a Famous Ezell’s?
/this is not a trick question
NotMax
Don’t lose
Your head
To gain a minute
You need your head
Your brains are in it
Burma-Shave
Source
Rafer Janders
@Culture of Truth:
Americans demand
Too much pay?
Outsource to where
Workers have no say.
Burma Slave.
Rafer Janders
@Culture of Truth:
Americans demand
Too much pay?
Outsource to where
Workers have no say.
Burma Slave.
Rafer Janders
The United Kingdom? But I thought London was in England?
Roger Moore
@Violet:
FTFY.
Tonal Crow
What’s next? “I didn’t “outsource” those jobs, I offshored them”?
jo6pac
Thanks to the both you for the info.
BGinCHI
@Rafer Janders: Let’s just go with Mercia to be safe.
trollhattan
I demand moar Burma Shave ads! They remind me of being a kid
imprisoned in the caraccompanying the family on road trip vacations.Erik Vanderhoff
This is my favoritest election ever. Team Romney is just so… bad at this.
ABL
@Omnes Omnibus: Ha!
Culture of Truth
She’s good but slow
My Aunt Mar
Pay half
Workers fast
Myananmar
Burma Slave
Culture of Truth
Restrictions have been reduced this year due to changes in Myanmar.
So it was retroactively legal.
R-Jud
@Rafer Janders: But where’s Great Britain? I’m so confused.
@BGinCHI: Too far north, yo. Mercia was mostly around the Trent Valley in the West Midlands.
NotMax
@Tonal Crow
Um, they didn’t outsource or offshore the jobs, they liberated them?
Rafer Janders
We jail and beat
And yes, we kill
But we’ll save you a lot
On your uniform bill.
Burma Slave.
trollhattan
Hey, where’s Cole? We haven’t had enough posts today. (JK, channeling my 10 Y.O.)
BGinCHI
What’s so gratifying so far this summer is the contrast in positions between the GOP nominee and Obama’s stated positions and his attacks.
Nominating Romney at this point in history is the perfect lever to pry open what is wrong with our economic system.
Pretty soon even the national media are going to be able to tell the difference.
trollhattan
@Culture of Truth:
Good one!
Tonal Crow
@NotMax:
Ooo, good one!
trollhattan
@BGinCHI:
You have more faith than I.
Rafer Janders
You live in Manhattan? But I thought you lived in New York City?
BGinCHI
@R-Jud: That’s right for certain periods, but at other times it absorbed the other kingdoms and dominated almost all of southern Britain.
Could have gone with Wessex….
Culture of Truth
BREAKING: Romney Pledges to Forge Greater Ties to England, Israel, Britain, Canada and United Kingdom
Rafer Janders
@Erik Vanderhoff:
This has just been a no-good horrible very bad week for them, hasn’t it?
Yutsano
@BGinCHI: The chicken place? NOM!! Peach cobbler to die for too!
BGinCHI
@NotMax: Freedom jobs!
BGinCHI
@Yutsano:Yep. We’ll be out for a week in mid-August and I’m determined to go (maybe more than once). I’ll tell Mrs. BG about the cobbler. That’s a winner for her.
Maybe a meetup with Seattle folks?
Tonal Crow
“I didn’t chop down that apple tree! I just swung an axe in such a way as to intersect it repeatedly until it fell over! Now you apologize for saying that I chopped it down!”
Kathy in St. Louis
Anyone care to venture a guess on the probability that he owned a stake in, or had friends who owned at stake in the company that got that contract? Inquiring minds would like a follow up on this particular story.
RedKitten
The comments, the mock ads, and TMBG…this thread is just way too much fun!
I salute you all from New Scotland.
Davis X. Machina
They have to be. Given the present state of the nation, and the economy, if they’re just average, they win.
Rafer Janders
You like vanilla and I like vanella,
You say Burma and I say Myanmar,
Vanilla, vanella, Burma, Myanmar,
Let’s call the whole thing off!
General Stuck
Every republican knows you get the cheapest labor with brutal regimes. The more brutal the more cheapest the labor. Romney is doing it cause every other republican does it and Obama is a soshulist party pooper with all that equal rights and justice for all mumbo jumbo. Why does Obama hate good ole American exploitation of cheap foreign labor and cheaper still brutal regimes. It’s not like those savages are jeevus loving Americans. Remember the Marianas, now them was some good old days at the Ralph Reed jungle sweat shops. Obama just doesn’t know how to be an American.
BGinCHI
@RedKitten: Halifax?
Davis X. Machina
Not quite sure
Where your job
Got sent?
Makes no diff.
to the 1%.
Burma
ShaveJob.Rafer Janders
To make a buck
Romney told SLOC
To take our jobs,
And pay off SLORC.
Burma Slave.
ABL
@Robin G.: Win.
Joel
@anthrosciguy: Myanmar is the term given to the country by the brutal autocracy that currently runs it, so Burma is probably the better option.
RedKitten
@BGinCHI: Formerly. Now a different part of N.S.
shortstop
I want to marry at least five people in this thread.
SFAW
Burma Shave? What a bunch o’ weenies.
To get those horrible rhynes outta my head, I think I’ll haveta go listen to “Academy Fight Song” and “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver”
ETA: by Mission of Myanmar, of course.
gwangung
@BGinCHI: Swear by the spicy version. Yummmm…..
Rafer Janders
@shortstop:
Darling, I’ve been waiting to hear those words for years…
Gex
@trollhattan: How about “Pretty soon the national media won’t be able to completely obfuscate this fact?” Good lord, I don’t expect the courtiers to turn, but the people being spoon fed lies will hopefully get the message regardless.
NotMax
Waiting for the other demented shoe to drop on this.
“Mitt was in Massachusetts on Bain business when the contract with Myanmar was approved, so he has no responsibility for it.”
anthrosciguy
@BGinCHI: Now I have that They Might Be Giants song stuck in my head:
The original is by The Four Lads, and they’re Canadian! There would’ve been room in your noggin for that tidbit if you hadn’t built that little birdhouse in there.
shortstop
@anthrosciguy: I have it on good authority that the soul is located nowhere near the noggin.
BGinCHI
@anthrosciguy: I blame Ana Ng. She’s been nothing but trouble.
shortstop
@NotMax: Literally weeping over here.
BGinCHI
@gwangung: It’s killing me to have to wait. It might make having to spend time with the in-laws worth it. That plus booze.
shortstop
@Rafer Janders: I remember well that night in New Amsterdam…you told me you’d do it if I could get a minimum of three other sister-wives or brother-hubs to sign on…
scav
@NotMax: Burma was once a colony, so those wage slave were retroactively British. Or maybe retroactive Toungoo-ese
anthrosciguy
@Joel: Myanmar is the term given to the country by the brutal autocracy that currently runs it, so Burma is probably the better option.
To be pedantic, and also to be fair to the people who changed the name (fairer than they deserve for their other actions), your statement is true but false. That is, it’s true that the dictatorship renamed it Myanmar, but that was the older name for it, Burma being named Burma by the British when they took over the kingdom of Myanma. But Bama (which obviously is close to sounding like Burma) is also a name attached to peoples there, so the name situation is rather more complicated than the sound bites we usually hear.
Wikipedia actually has a pretty thorough piece on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Burma
anthrosciguy
@shortstop: Damn. My memory is going. I’ve got a little birdhouse up there!
shortstop
@anthrosciguy: Sometimes, when life seems cruel and the future bleak, I think about the fact that two guys wrote a fearsomely wonderful and perfectly constructed song ABOUT A NIGHTLIGHT, and peace washes over me.
Mike S.
Manufactured under the violent Burmese junta… as opposed to being made in the USA, a country which wrought extreme violence upon Iraq for 10 years w/o justification, and one which continues under Obama to kill innocent people with drone strikes in half a dozen countries on whom Congress has not declared war.
The problem with off-shoring jobs is that it is detrimental to the workforce here in the US; it is action unbecoming a patriot and presidential candidate.
ABL would do herself a favor to leave out the hypocritical, irrelevant bombast when making arguments.
chrome agnomen
i’ll bet $10,000 willard made a pallet of money on the olympic bailout.
anthrosciguy
@shortstop: BTW, you’ve seen the Tonight Show version with TMBG and Doc Severinsen and the band? Saw it back when, but thanks to the Tube. Pure fun had by all.
Boots Day
Workers want
A living wage?
Try some who are
Under age!
Burma Slave
Gypsy howell
@Rafer Janders:
You’re fuckin killin me.
You win this thread.
Gypsy howell
@Boots Day:
You too
Roger Moore
We’ll make your stuff
For nearly free
By jailing
Aung San Suu Kyi
Burma Slave
Boots Day
Unions want
Va-cays and bennies
Here the workers
Toil for pennies
Burma Slave
Yutsano
@BGinCHI: A meet-up is a definite possibility. Ezell’s doesn’t have a dining area (at least the one near my house doesn’t) but I think I got a place in my head you’ll enjoy just as much. Plus orsters!
slightly_peeved
Production costs
Keep you up nights?
Try workers with
No human rights
Burma slave.
Villago Delenda Est
@Culture of Truth:
WIN!
On edit: and WIN! to all the other Burma Slavers!
thalarctos
obligatory Monty Python reference:
Pepperpot 2: Penguins don’t come from next door; they come from the Antarctic!
Pepperpot 1: BURMA!
Pepperpot 2: Why’d you say “Burma”?
Pepperpot 1: I panicked.
AA+ Bonds
Is there anything sadder and funnier than a Huffington Post blog about people’s labor being exploited
Probably not
BGinCHI
@Yutsano: If you check back here….sounds great. I know my mother-in-law will give us a couple nights to get out and have some social time, so maybe we can figure something out. I’m guessing others here from the area might be interested.
Let’s set it up in the next few weeks.
Bruce S
And, of course like a good crony capitalist, he paid for them with taxpayer’s dollars:
Sports Illustrated, 12/10/01
Boots Day
U.S. workers
Ain’t worth shit
Burmese are
Beloved by Mitt
Burma Slave
Yutsano
@BGinCHI: Weekends are best for me but I could massage that a bit. If you get a firm date to MikeJ he can get the website going for planning. I gots a good restaurant pick but I’ll relay more info after work.
Roy G.
Why’d he do it?
Because in the end,
Dictatorships are
People, my friend.
Patricia Kayden
This post explains why Romneybot 2.0 had nothing to say about the current outsourcing by Ralph Lauren.
Boots Day
Make your clothes
The Romney Way
Love that eighteen-
Hour day!
Burma Slave
pattonbt
@Omnes Omnibus: Thats nobody’s business but the Turks!
(didnt read all the comments to see if others went there too).
EDIT – only had to see two more comments to see I was too late. Oh well.
brantl
“Outsourcing jobs to Burma is so bad, that it’s like—it’s like—outsourcing jobs to motherfucking Burma” That was freakin’ awesome, and I never use that word, much less bold it.