The Mitt: Unprincipled or Ignorant? Yes.
“I’m going to make sure you get a job. Thanks Jeremy. Yeah, you bet,” - Mitt Romney, October 16.
“As president, I will create 12 million new jobs,” - Mitt Romney, October 16.
“The government doesn’t create jobs,” - Mitt Romney, October 16.
Sure, a spurious consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. But history? History is always instructive.
During the Great Depression, Congress and President Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps. From 1933-1942, the CCC provided young men with some 2.5 million jobs. When The Mitt says “The Government doesn’t create jobs,” he’s either lying or betraying an abysmal ignorance of recent U.S. history. Of course the government can create jobs; all it takes is an act of Congress. In the CCC, enrollment peaked at some 505,000 jobs.
Low-paying? Yep.
Fairly primitive field conditions? Yep.
But jobs? Most definitely.
“The government doesn’t create jobs” is idiotic. It’s not even a useful lie, since it precludes Romney from criticizing the Obama administration for not having created more of the jobs that government doesn’t create. If I didn’t trust you, WC — and I do — I would suspect you of taking the statement out of context. It’s worse than being ignorant of the New Deal and the CCC. Any employer “creates jobs” when it hires additional employees, and governments — federal, state, municipal — are employers, as anyone with an 8th-grade education knows, let alone the former Governor of Massachusetts. Is he possessed by the spirit of the former Governor of Alaska?
freshwatersnark
October 18, 2012 at 4:24 pm
Yikes! What about the WPA? — that army of people who labored in an incredible range of jobs from artists to typists, road builders, bridge builders (some of the most beautiful spans on the West Coast were designed and built by WPAers). It was a program that infused energy and allowed people to see themselves as contributing citizens in a time of seriously terrifying economic chaos. I find this use of money a hell of a lot more honest than some of the crap jobs the Pentagon/welfare system invents to keep people “busy” and its pockets loaded with loot. It is time to repair the crumbling infrastructure in our cities instead of building tanks and F-22s nobody wants nor needs. Mitt Romney has no answers, just the same old worn out BS fear-mongering we have been hearing for years. It simply amazes me he wants to up the military budget — even the fringe right sees this is a no-hitter vote strategy. Romney: Out of ideas and out of touch.
aklucia
October 18, 2012 at 9:28 pm