I read an article today that said that George Romney, father of Mitt, was born in Mexico. I am positive that when George ran for president in 1968, nobody made a big deal out of this. Obviously if he was elected, he could not serve since he was not born in the U.S. So why was he running and why it was not all over the news then? I would have thought that his opponents like Nixon would have pointed that out. I understand that George's maternal grandfather was a Mexican citizen. Would Mitt then be our first Hispanic president if he is elected?
Romney has been attacked by Gingrich and Perry over his previous work at Bain capital. I have mix feeling about this attack. The complaints in these ads is that Bain had to fire a lot of employees in trying to restructure companies. Well, obviously these companies were not run efficiently in the first place otherwise they would not be in such deep trouble. Any attempt to make them more efficient would require cutting employees. So in that sense the attacks are unfair. But of course Romney campaigns on the notion that his work at Bain CREATED many jobs. That is not true either. Sure some companies made it back and thus eventually hired people again. But those are not jobs created but were brought back. Also some companies eventually failed and the jobs never came back. The point is the companies that made it back had good products or business to begin with. It was just poorly managed. By involving a venture capitalist, some of the debts were forgiven and some of the pension obligations went away, allowing the company to start over. It was not Bain or Romney who created a new product or business that led to hiring of people. Overall, the jobs total at the end of the day with these type of buyouts or whatever you want to call it, is about even.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
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You are right. I was thinking the same thing these last couple of weeks with the back and forth between Gingrich and Romney. I'm sure Bain made Mitt a lot of money but it's hard to hang your hat on being associated with it. There's nothing else you can do if you're Romney but to say that he created jobs. He can't come out and say that he eliminated jobs even though that was the most fiscally responsible thing to do at the time.
ReplyDeleteInteresting fact or rumor about George Romney. I had never heard of that but a lot of things like that never got out back then either. Maybe we can start calling Mitt senor Romney? I wonder if he's as fluent in espanol as he is in francais?
-LBOAYM
I looked up wikipedia on George Romney and he was born in Mexico. So unless someone put in a false entry, which is possible, then I guess George was not born in the U.S. Even though they did not have internet back then, I can't believe that people would not know about this. Given that Mormons were even less mainstream back then, I am surprise not more was said about it.
ReplyDeleteI understand that Romney is being attacked about speaking French again. At least that would be one thing that the Democrats will not use against him in the general election.