Mitt Romney refuses to even meet with the folks from Bainport and yet he expects the public to believe that he didn’t mean what he said about the 47% of Americans being lazy and feeling entitled to healthcare and food.
Bainport is a community set up outside of the Bain owned Sensata factory in Freeport, Ill, that is “fighting to save our jobs from being shipped to China by the end of this year. We are calling on Mitt Romney to come to Freeport, IL and we will camp across the street from our plant for as long as it takes!”
Bainport is comprised of hard working people whose jobs have been harvested for profit by Mitt Romney’s company. Bain made the Freeport workers train their Chinese replacements, and is now shipping equipment to China to set up shop where labor is 85% cheaper than in the US.
The Overpass Light Brigade paid a visit to Bainport. Watch here:
Occupy Riverwest writes, “The town of Freeport, Illinois is fighting back against vulture capitalists like Bain Capital who sweep into their hometowns, closing down family-supporting jobs and outsourcing them overseas, so they can pay slave labor wages and pocket the profits. All on the backs of American workers. The people of Freeport have organized an encampment across the street from Sensata (the company being closed down) to send a message to Bain and others like them that they will not lie down. The Overpass Light Brigade paid a visit to Bainport (as the encampment is being called) to spread the word about the community’s efforts and the destruction created by vulture capitalists like Bain.”
These are not “hippies” and “radicals” as the Right attempted to paint Occupy — these are our moms and dads, our grandparents, our brothers and sisters. These are Americans, demanding that Mitt Romney meet with them to discuss the fact that their jobs are being shipped overseas.
If you haven’t seen a town shuttered by loss of jobs, maybe this won’t stab you in the heart as it does me. But I had relatives rendered jobless in Flint, Michigan after the closures of plants there. Where there was once a thriving middle class, there is now decay and despair. It’s laughable that any politician could call themselves pro-life and yet be actively destroying middle class jobs, ruining communities and the families within them, leaving children to starve and their parents without access to healthcare. Sadly, these are not exaggerations but rather, if anything, a glossed over account of human anguish.
This is nothing short than the issue of our times after 40 years of trickle down destruction.
How is it possible that we keep electing politicians who are against good American jobs because they are more concerned with their own portfolios than they are the people they serve?
The New York Times exposed the fundamental hypocrisy in Romney’s tough China talk when Bain is touting China as a great investment because labor is 85% cheaper:
(A) confidential prospectus for one of the Bain funds, obtained by The New York Times, promotes China as a good investment for some of the same reasons that Mr. Romney has said concern him: “Strong fundamentals” like manufacturing wages 85 percent lower than what Americans earn, vast foreign exchange reserves and the likelihood that China will surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy.
Unions are the only buffer between the working class and the profit motive, but union membership can’t stop Bain from harvesting jobs. A tax code that rewards companies for keeping jobs here, as proposed by Obama, is needed. Unfortunately, Republicans have repeatedly “blocked efforts to clamp down on tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas.”
Manufacturing jobs are more than a paycheck; they are a source of pride for a working class whose work ethics are much stronger than Mitt Romney gives them credit for. Romney, it’s been said over and over again by those who know him, doesn’t realize how privileged he is, and he looks down upon those who haven’t achieved his level of success.
Romney pathologically ignores that he started on third base. If the ability to empathize is a necessity for good stewardship, Mitt Romney shouldn’t be running for office. How can he possibly claim that his policies would help the middle and lower classes when he doesn’t even acknowledge where they are coming from long enough to learn something about what it’s really like?
Romney’s been avoiding Bainport, just like he avoids taking responsibility for how he would give the rich a 20% tax cut without adding to the deficit (work it out in congress is code for we’ll do what Bush did; i.e., not pay for it).
It is almost inconceivable that Mitt Romney can be running for President and yet continue to avoid meeting the very people whom his company has destroyed. Yes, he has every right to be an unfeeling predator who puts greed above all else, but the people have every right to call him out on his choices.
What did the Romney campaign say in response to Bainport? They dodged any remote responsibility, saying “Governor Romney has not worked at Bain Capital for over a decade” and then blamed President Obama for how Bain Capital chooses to make a profit.
Romney is still invested in Bain Capital and earning income like an executive, and this is what allows his income to be taxed at the lower rate of capital gains. Is there no rock Romney won’t slither under in order to avoid facing the ramifications of the way he chose to get even wealthier than he started off?
The problem is that Mitt Romney refuses to take responsibility for how he got so wealthy, just as he refuses to even hear the folks in Bainport. Shouldn’t a president be willing to hear out the other side? Romney says he would be bipartisan, but he’s shown over and over again that he won’t listen to others, even when they’re on his own side.
The corporate plutocracy has tried successfully to shame the middle and lower classes into not complaining about the status quo. If they do complain, they’re accused of being lazy, waging a class war, and being jealous.
It’s time to turn the tables, and quite simply force the images in this video into public awareness as a fundamental issue of this election.
It’s not just that Mitt Romney is wrong for America, it’s that the politicians have been working for the wrong groups and the media has ignored the real plight of the American people. The silence is deafening.
These are real people, camping out in protest of losing their jobs. It’s not a gag or a put on by rich brothers pretending to be a grassroots movement. This is is a real as it gets.
It’s an outrage that Mitt Romney said he took back his comments about the 47% and yet he doesn’t feel compelled to even acknowledge the folks at Bainport.
Will Romney ever even pretend to care about their concerns? Will the media ask Romney why he’s avoiding them? We need to insist upon candidates who want to actually represent THE PEOPLE, not the Koch Brothers or mini versions thereof like Appalachia’s Mr. Murray.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
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