Posted on 07/17/2012 9:45:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign spent the weekend mired in a tortured dispute over a seemingly absurd question: When is the CEO and sole shareholder of a company he founded not responsible for the actions of the company? The Romney camp’s answer is that it’s unfair to criticize him for offshoring, outsourcing, and layoffs at Bain-controlled companies between 1999 and 2002 because in practice he was on a leave of absence running the Salt Lake Olympics. Senior adviser Ed Gillespie, speaking on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, explained that when Romney was elected governor of Massachusetts in November 2002, he “retired retroactively” at the date on which he first took leave.
These efforts to wriggle out of accountability for a business career that Romney has cited as a key qualification for the presidency are fundamentally lame. The timing of the kerfuffle distracts from the actual substantive question about Romney’s Bain tenure: Did Bain’s management team do anything wrong by shipping jobs overseas when they thought doing so would be profitable?
The answer is almost certainly no. Nothing that occurred during the Bain transition period was out of step with the fundamental orientation of the company Romney created and hadn’t yet left. If Romney were a less pathologically risk-averse politician, he would defend what Bain did after 1999 and point out that there’s nothing wrong with companies shifting production offshore.
A good intuition check here is to note that nobody seems to think there’s anything wrong with offshoring when the United States is the offshore production site. And yet that’s often exactly what we are. Once upon a time Japanese and German cars were imported to American shores. Today that’s relatively rare.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
At the moment, all Airbus planes flying in the United States are imported from Hamburg, Germany, or Toulouse, France, but soon the popular A320 series will be made in Alabama.
SolarWorld, one of the leading photovoltaic manufacturers in the country, is a division of a German company. And the same thing happens outside the manufacturing sector. The British magazine the Economist employs American writers, some of whose output is read by a European, U.K., or Asian audience. That’s outsourcing!
The media isn't going to help. They will play dumb. They will "re-phrase" the defense in unhelpful ways.
Remember when Mitt promoted private enterprise (rather than mandated government solutions)? Mitt said he wanted decent support for what he was paying for -- if he didn't get value for his money he had a soliution: "I like being able to fire people".
Okay, the media had a field day with that one -- although what Mitt was saying was not a bad thing.
Do you really think "I like off-shoring jobs" is a winning campaign slogan in 2012?
Romney can turn this around on Obama and use it against him. Don't blame Bain, blame the US government for it unfriendly business climate.
FYI: 5 million Americans have jobs from foreign investment in the US.
No, but "Let's stop off-shoring jobs by making America business-friendly" is a winner.
The article is saying "Off-shoring is fine" and I disagree with that statement as a campaign slogan.
Considering the way Obama treats business, big and small, there is plenty of reason for them to go elsewhere.
Myth will not touch the outsourcing problem because it effects the Unions..
The Unions are the major reason company move offshore..
Myth is a Union Stooge.. owned by the Unions..
Taxes are also a good reason but the Unions are the major reason.. Taxes and Unions chase business offshore..
Myth will not touch the Unions.. and will feed them pounds of flesh as President as well..
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