I just finished reading one very scary story about Mitt Romney and people like him. It was written by Matt Taibbi and published in Rolling Stone with nearly perfect timing in August of 2012. Taibbi is one of my heroes in journalism. His articles are factual, backed up by interviews and research and they have a point: check out this massive transfer of wealth without work. You can find that story here, it's called, "Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital".
While reading the story, I was recalling presidential campaigns of long ago and the most recent campaign with Mitt Romney. I recall Reagan's call for personal accountability, at least for everyone else but him and his cabal. I had a suspicion we were seeing the same thing with Romney before the 2012 election, but this article confirms it. Romney wants money for nothing, and he got it. In spades.
That Rolling Stone article is a fantastic analysis of the Romney mindset. Money is made from government subsidies, corporate debt, and bonuses for everyone on the board when the takeover is done. Companies are loaded up with debt, forcing them to layoff workers or to go bankrupt. Pension funds are vaporized after sending the money away to the new bosses (don't worry, the government will often find ways to replace that money). The architects of these takeovers that Romney took part in or designed himself, get paid millions in fees and take money out of their targets after the loans are cleared. Then they sit back and watch the company fail after putting as much distance as possible between them.
Mitt Romney personifies The Conservative Nanny State. He uses government subsidies like there is nothing better to do. Even if he put on lipstick and a wig, who would ever believe that he's a welfare queen? But journalists who dig deep, like Taibbi, are finding more and more, that we very nearly elected a welfare queen for president, except that he wears a suit and tie.
I am even more appalled when I see that in 2012, Romney represented the GOP. I know people who vote Republican. I like those people. Some are family and I love them. So when I see the layers of deceit propping up a man like Romney to be nominated as a presidential candidate for the Republican Party, I don't see that he really represents the people I know. He cannot share the same interests average Americans have and do all the things he does in business at the same time. Actions speak louder than words.
This is what I will be thinking about when I see the GOP presidential candidates for 2016. They all support the Reagan Revolution. They are all pro-business and seem to have a hard time grasping the fact that business needs consumers and that if you reduce the rights of workers, you reduce demand for business. None of them seem to get or understand the sociopathy of the Romney mindset, either. All of them are in the GOP clown car.
Men like Romney are exactly why I support Bernie Sanders and write about him here on this blog. We need someone in the White House who is thinking and talking about the rest us, and that is what Bernie does.
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